Huff, Huff, Huff

Running as fast as I can, I don’t know where I am, or how I got here but I know one thing, I NEED TO RUN. A Loud howl roars out, I run as fast as I possibly can, I hear something quickly approaching me form behind before I feel a wolf’s jaw clamps down on my side as it digs its teeth into both my stomach and my back, sharp pain swirls and explodes into existence...

…

My eyelids shoot open as I begin shaking and crying quietly as to not wake up the man from the previous night, Then as I was sobbing a sharp searing pain jolts me fully awake, Ahffu-, I think as I instinctually reach towards my injured shoulder and immediately regret it, sending another burning sensation through my body.

“God, fucking, damnit.” I say between breaths, looking around I notice the man from last night was awoken from the commotion.

He looks over at me and asks something, “WW91IGFscmlnaHQ/”.

I shoot him a puzzled look and shrug at him before saying some words to get the point across, “I have no idea what you said.”, the look of realization spreading across the mans face, he then pointed at himself and says, “Henry”, I look at him and point, “Henry?” after a light nod I point at myself and the man looks back expectantly, “David.”. Nodding Henry points towards me, “Daevid”, I shake my head and repeat, “David”, he responds, “David”, earning him a nod.

Henry seems to go quiet for a minute or two, while I take the time to gather the pelt I slept in, wondering what to do next.

Snapping me out of my thinking, Henry says something, “David! Q2FuIHlvdSBzaG93IG1lIHlvdXIgc3RhdHVzPw==”, I shoot him another look, Didn’t we literally just establish we can’t speak the same language? Henry catching this and makes a “Whoops” face, then says something, “U3RhdHVz”, I just blankly stare at him and he repeats what he says.

Still confused, I repeat, “U3RhdHVz-whhhhattt”, as a blue square appears.

[

?&%-(Error)-*#%. User not inhabitant of current world.

Recalibrating…

…

Recalibration complete.

Welcome, David.

*Achievement complete:

World Traveller: You have traversed the fabric of space and time, leaving behind the ordinary world to explore. Bonus reward for accidentally travelling worlds. Extra bonus reward for unintentionally travelling worlds whilst also unprepared.

Reward: Language learning speed increased +50%

Bonus reward: Learning speed increased +10%

Bonus Reward: Advanced speech of the first sentient species you talk to.

Congratulations! You have Slayed a level 5 Direwolf!

Extra experience given for killing a creative that has a higher level than user.

Level up!

Level up!

Level up!

Name: David Velac

Age: 22

Race: Human (Variant: Unknown) Level: 3

Titles: World Traveller

Class: N/A

Health: 3/10

Stamina: 8/10

Attributes

Strength – [8]

Constitution – [5]

Dexterity – [6]

Endurance – [7]

Wisdom – [7]

Intelligence – [9]

Charisma – [4]

Perception – [10]

]

Henry snaps me once again, out of my stupor as I stare blankly at the blue square, by going up next to me and looks at the screen.

His surprise, however, was not what I expected as he jumped slightly and looks at me, revaluating gaze.

Catching my questioning gaze he breaks his concentration and says a couple of words, “David, Ca-“but quickly gets cut off by my sudden screaming, as a rush of information thrashes my brain back and forth, once the pain starts to lessen I exhale deeply whilst commenting on how I was feeling.

“Fuck m-“stopping realising something was wrong, “Sorry, but I’ve only just met you, usually people ask me out to dinner first but whatever.” A voice coming from my right as my gaze snaps on his.

“Wait how can-oh…OH!” I question but come to a quick realisation, he couldn’t understand me, I could understand him! I was unintentionally speaking a different language!

Starting to piece together, he asks Henry, “Hey can you understand me?” I say not completely confidant in the language, Henry enthusiastically nods his head, “Yes! You seem to be under quite the situation!” He says heartily.

I listen silently as more bits of information enter my mind telling me the meaning of his response, far lesser than the previous information transfer.

“Well, neese to meet you, Henry.” Henry just thinks for a moment before responding, “Nice to meet you too David, though as I just said, its “Nice to meet you” not “Neese to meet you”.”

I apologize quickly, “Sorry, hard to switch between 2 different languages, especially one where I know most of the words, I say but not the meaning of the words.” I shrug, “So, I don’t particularly know what to do now, I feel like based on my title, “traveling worlds” isn’t a common thing?” I say hoping I’m wrong, that small hope, however, was crushed immediately.

“Apologize, but you would be correct, I haven’t heard of your situation, well except from legends but its safe to say that you’re in a far different situation then them.” Henry apologizes, causing me to sigh.

“Well, can you tell me what the hell is this?” gesturing towards the floating blue screen, shock fills Henry’s face, “D-d-do you not have a system or status in your world?!” he exclaims before quietly muttering, “Maybe that’s why the race is an unknown variant…”.

“What did you say?” I respond, missing the muttering, “Ah just thinking aloud, nothing to be concerned about.” Nodding I think about the so called “System and status”, then a realisation comes over me, I try and wave my hand a few times, seeing nothing happen I try to will the screen to disappear, which it does.

“Status” I say aloud as a blue screen appears in front of me again, I smirk realising that what Henry asked earlier was “Status” which caused it to appear.

“Looks like you’re starting to piece things together.” Henry mentions with a grin, “You must be excited. I personally can’t imagine a world without the system.” I nod enthusiastically before commenting or something, “Hey, can I get some information on the attributes? They’re kind of vague?”.

“Ah, before I get into that, I would recommend we head to a town, its about a day away from here, and while you seem to have done a somewhat decent job at bandaging your wounds, that’s definitely not enough.” He says with certainty, I nod while happy to be returning to civilization again.

“I’ll tell you about your stats on the way.” Henry mentions while I was zoned out, breaking me out of my stupor.

“Huh? Oh yeah, that would be great.” I say as I come back to the conversation mid-sentence.

…

After packing what little things I had, we started heading east, “Okay I’m going in a order of top to bottom so listen closely. Firstly, Strength, this one is quite simple, it increases the amount and quality of your muscles, increases the amount of weight, maximum speed, and physical power. Next, Constitution, this is probably where your confusion started, it increases your durability, your weight and density. Usually, constitution and strength go hand in hand, if you have too little strength but a lot of constitution, if you punch someone then your fist, while hard won’t have same amount of power behind it, it won’t be as fast, and will generally be weaker, its recommended to have a certain amount of balance between your physical stats. Speaking of which, Dexterity, increases your flexibility and reflexes, the ease of your movements is increased. Endurance, this is directly connected to your Stamina and Health, to summarize it allows for you to regain your Stamina more quickly, and Health regeneration, it will also increase the total amount of health and stamina though to a lesser degree, I’ll get back to Health and Stamina after I explain the rest of the Attributes. Next Wisdom, I’ll also explain Intelligence since these two are also connected, Intelligence, simply, increases the amount of information your brain can remember, Wisdom however increases the use of the information stored, it increases the speed at which you think, and critical thinking is improved. So, intelligence helps gather information, and wisdom helps use the information, minor note it’s also considered if you increase these two it becomes more easier to handle mental attacks. Moving onto Charisma, it’s a not fully understood, but generally it increases people’s persuasiveness and likeability. Last but not least, Perception, increases your senses and awareness, also it technically it considered to increase comprehension, officially it isn’t confirmed, but it’s basically universally accepted, though some studies say that an increase to intelligence and wisdom will also increase it.”

He finishes as I try to memorize the information dumped on me, “Now going back to the earlier mentioned Health and Sta-.” I cut him off, “Hold on, I’m still processing the previous information just give me a moment.” As I rub my temples trying to get my head around everything.

A couple minutes later having thought over Stats and a few confirmations from Henry, they continue where they left.

“Getting back into topic.” He huffs and continues, “Health and Stamina are all I’ve mentioned but there are more, though you haven’t unlocked them yet. However your not alone, there are a few that are known, but just as many unknown, that’s more advanced and you can look into on your own free time, focusing on the basic and most well-known, Mana, Mana is a type of energy to, well its hard to explain mana but you can basically do a wide amount of things with it, create tornados, create walls of flame, summon a tsunami, though all of those are high tier magic with wall of flames being a more intermediate spell, sorry, back onto topic, Mana’s total amount is increased with wisdom and intelligence, when Wisdom is increased, it increases the mana regeneration of your total pool, while intelligence increases total mana pool.

Now this isn’t the only way to increase it, this is same for health and stamina, but when you level up your health, mana and stamina all increase, this leads to Health and Stamina, these two also have their amount increased by Attributes, Constitution adds the most to health with a little towards stamina, around 3:1, on the other hand Endurance obviously increases Stamina and health regen and totals. Perception also gives a small amount of stamina but not much in comparison.”

“Understand?” Henry asks expectantly, eyes glowing with anticipation towards me, I nod but quickly add, “I think I got everything, just wondering how stamina and Health are measured?”.

Henry smiles at his question and responds, “This is a bit of a hard to answer question, hard as in we have a general idea but we are figuring out the details, Health is the more easier one, we consider it to be based on total blood in your body, if your hp hits 0, than that means you lack the necessary minimum to live, it doesn’t mean your out of blood, just that you have less than needed to keep the body functional, stamina however, far harder to answer, its kind of a mix between how built your muscles are built, how much energy you have in your body and how efficiently your body uses that energy. Though the 2nd is more theorized then proven.” He finishes with a sad smile.

“Oh right on time, see over there” he points towards a structure slowly growing in size, “It will be a bit hard to see this late but you can make out some lights on.” He states, I just nod and assume we were close, I couldn’t see anything after all.

“Also, I should mention, you probably don’t have any skills yet?” He asks looking towards me as I nod and he continue, “Skills will be unlocked at a later point, the section will unlock once you learn a skill, which is a lot easier said then done. Takes talent, skill, and a bunch of practice. Though the difficulty of earning a skill, changes based on how strong or useful the skill is, and before you ask, no I don’t know how the system categorizes what’s strong or useful.” I lower my raised hand which he caught sight of mid-sentence.

“Well, since we are almost there, you can ask some other people about stuff like classes, 2nd classes, skills, currency. Or if you stick with me than you can at a later point.” He says with a grin stretching across his scarred face.

I nod and thank the man, he would have been incredibly lost without him, “Last thing for the night, don’t tell anyone about you being from another world unless you want to be a lab rat for years, also don’t show anyone your status.” I raise my hand again which he sighs in response, “Yes you can see your status without showing it to everyone, just think about the word ‘Status’, or think of converting your physical and mental attributes into numbers mentally. Stuff like that.”

I nod, chuckling lightly at how predictable I was getting before trying what he had just mentioned, he continued walking, not needing to worry about hitting any trees or rocks in the clearing leading up to the city.

Delving deep into my subconscious, I calm my thoughts on the days that had passed, looking deep into myself, I internally say.

‘Status’

And a wave of information enters my head and notifications go off.

[

[Ding, your intelligence has increased by 1.]

Name: David Velac

Age: 22

Race: Human (Variant: Unknown) Level: 3

Titles: World Traveller

Class: N/A

Health: 3/10

Stamina: 8/10

Attributes

Strength – [8]

Constitution – [5]

Dexterity – [6]

Endurance – [7]

Wisdom – [7]

Intelligence – [9 -> 10]

Charisma – [4]

Perception – [10]

]