After Prof finished with his looks (and admiring them in the mirror) he had to choose and enter his Perks. He did choose them earlier when he contemplated his build, so this task wasn’t that hard either. He chose:

Bloodbath: Aren’t you a little butcher? Now you can slaughter everything faster! Slightly. Gain +10 damage in Hand-to-Hand and Melee combat, no matter the weapon.

Bonus Melee Attack: Slaughter more efficiently! By spending years to refine your movements your melee attacks are faster.

Better Criticals: Do you like to watch your enemy’s spilled intestines and splattered brain? Do you like to bath in their blood? You are on the right path! If you achieve a Critical Hit, the damage you deal is 50% higher, and you have a 25% chance to maim a body part.

More Criticals: If it’s about dismembering your enemies the most brutal way, nothing is good enough for you! You get a +5% chance for a Critical Hit.

Ambidextrous: Are you fed up with only being able to scratch your behind with only one hand? Now you can do it with both! You don’t have to suffer a deduction from your Skill if you use your other hand for tasks.

EXP-sponge: What doesn’t kill you, gives you EXP! The more, the better! You gain +10% more EXP. Poor little weasels.

Educated: You realize the connections faster, no footnote escapes your attention. You gain +25 Skill Points per Level.

Munchkin: If you abuse the System, don’t go half ways! You gain one Level!

Cartographer: You don’t know where the bar is? Look at the map! You will be able to read a map perfectly, can make your own maps (The Skill [Art: Drawing] will still influence the result!) and you will have a sense, what is where in relation to you.

The first five Perks he had to get for his planned fighting style: eviscerate every enemy with two one-handed weapon in the fastest and most efficient way possible. Since the Rule Book never stated explicitly there was a calculation regarding speed of attack and actions, Prof thought it prudent to pick a Perk that made his attacks “faster”. Obviously the people didn’t need to know about the calculation (if there was in fact one) – but probably did some experimentation down on the world and figured it out nevertheless, but there are things were you can not trump Locals living under a System for probably thousands of years.

Even if Prof didn’t know how it worked, every last bit helped to beat that monster up fast. Like having ten guaranteed extra damage for every successful hit. There were a lot of Perks that gave extra damage, but most gave either a bonus percentage or a multiplicator, and they were too expensive. The chance for a Critical Hits was half the value of Luck, so Prof could achieve one with every twelfth hit – but with the Perk that moved up to every eighth. Theoretically, at least. If he achieved a Critical Hit he would deal even more damage.

With the next three Perks Prof tried to close the gap to the Locals. More EXP plus more Skill Points, equals smaller gap. Even so, he was probably at a disadvantage to the locals, who had six years of experience on Prof. He would have chosen the Perks multiple times (and also the Perks for fighting), but concluded that even more negative Perks were not in his interest.

He thought most about of the very last one. He decided to pick it up, because he was good at reading maps in his old life (and yes, he abhorred the route planners), and he liked to know where he was without having to rely on his mobile phone. And hope there is connection to use the mobile phone. Since he doubted, mobile phones and cell towers were a thing in a medieval world (yes, they are quite new in our world too, you youngsters will probably not believe it, but a few decades ago no one walked around with his eyes glued to his smartphone!), so he had to find his way on his own. Not just figuratively.

Next came the negative Perks.

Bad Skill: You haven’t really dealt with this Skill in your life. You suffer a -25% penalty to the Skill.

He picked it five times.

Anti-Talent: Not that way, man! You are absolutely unfit in this Skill. You would make everyone happy, if you didn’t even try. You suffer a -30% penalty to a Skill, and it is twice as expensive to rise it.

He picked it three times.

Parvenu: You thought, you could buy your way into high aristocracy with enough money? You are actually right, but they won’t accept you. The upper classes will look down on you no matter how much money you amass.

Although Prof started to get fixated on Skills, he had to pick the first two – everything else either caused his fighting power do diminish, gave him some addiction or mental issues, shorter lifespan, less resistances to the environment, or a disability. Or some other undesired effect.

There were probably people out there who would willingly pick to be Shunned for the maximum of seven points just for the validation or for the Points, but good luck to find anyone you cold talk to anywhere (OK, what would be Shunned for seven points be anyway? A Kobold entering society? A black, non-Christian, openly homosexual female with leprosy and visible STDs working as a courtesan in the Fourteenth Century Europe?).

Prof wasn’t one of them.

Masochisms and political activism do have some limits – and when there is no CSI in a world, the authorities didn’t care about the whereabouts of some trouble maker, and finding the corpse of a loud-mouthed idealist below the refuse pile is not in the interest of the Town Guard (who may or may not have put the corpse there in the first place). You better not rock the boat. You may fall out.

He planned to use the three Anti-Talents on things he would never ever use, and the five Bad Skills on stuff he had no real interest in, but may have a use later on. No one and nothing could stand in his way to get Overpowered!

If someone or something tried, it will be overpowered into oblivion! Hahaha!

Of course, that was for later, number one priority was still to survive till overpoweredness kicked in.

The last one he picked because the filthy rich and entitled looked down on everyone else already, so that made no difference at all. If Prof managed to get filthy rich and entitled himself… well, those blue-blooded wankers can look down on him as long as they want. What’s the worst thing that could happen? They won’t invite him to some boring reception or found raiser? He won’t be able to join some secret cabals? Well, that would be soooooo saaad.

Or not.

Whatever.

Finally, Prof arrived at Skills! Because of his Age and Level he had almost eight hundred Points to play with! First, he picked his Super-Skills, and raised them to 150% - [Axes], [Evasion], [Looting] and [Valuation] were his picks. The first two helped to hit things reliably and not to get hit in return. The third should have been a get-to for every Grave Robber, Burglar and Corpse Looters... Ehmmm…

Sorry, I meant for every upstanding Adventurer! It made the usual… options… to get money or valuable thing more easy: you just knew, where people… ehmmm… the monsters put their valuables, where it was folks… ehmmm… the Evil Wizard put their safes, and it almost guaranteed to find more and more valuable stuff on corpses… Ehmmm… on the cadavers of your vanquished foes.

For the last one? Ever wanted to know how much that Sword cost? What it’s “Stats” are? You don’t have to visit the shady merchant in a back-alley any more! With this Skill you will be able to tell the value of your pilfered Sword without problems! The System guarantees it! Pick it now!

Khmmm… Commercial over, we switch back to our main program.

Prof was almost certain, that most merchants would cheat him out of his honestly pilfered loot without a blink, so he thought it important to have at least a passing familiarity what the loot really cost. Even than, someone with a high [Commerce] Skill would probably haggle him down, but at least he knew he was out-commerced. With 150% in the Skill he assumed, he could put a value to every commonly found item, and maybe even to most not-so-common ones.

His three Anti-Talents went into [Agriculture], [Mining] and [Livestock Breeding]. He had not the slightest inclination to dig dirt or do such heavy work. He was from a city, after all! He also picked his five Bad Skills: [Geology], [Astrology], [Blacksmithing], [Masonry] and [Tanning]. Heavy or smelly work, no thanks!

It would have been easy, if he could have just dumped the Perks on Magic, that he was not interested in, but the Magic-Skills were so low to begin with, that he would have slipped into negative proficiency. He had the suspicion that with any negative Skill he would be awed and intimidated by the use of said Skill.

Not a good prospect.

If anything, he would have to get more familiar with magical things, just to recognise the different schools, what they did, and what they could do.

With the rest of his Skill Points he raised [Speech] to 125% (he found it strange that he could not choose a language, but assumed it would be set when he arrived in the new world), while [Geography], [Navigation], [Commerce], [Bare-handed Combat] and [Daggers] were set to 101%. It was good to know where you were and where you headed, after all!

He planned to use axes for the most part, but it was never a bad idea to have some insurance: his fists and feet were attached to him, so he would never be weaponless in a pinch, and knives and daggers were basically laying around everywhere. He planned to get his other fighting Skills to this level too, but that was not a priority right now.

The rest of his Points – around 200 – were distributed between [Riding], [Wilderness Survival], [Tracking], [Hunting], [Intimidation], [Convincing] and [Etiquette] – none of the Skills got above 100%, but being between 50 and 80% Prof was confident he had a relatively good chance in everyday life. And besides, he planned to get those to around 100% too later.

He checked his Sheets one more time and turned to the grinning clerk.