Time seemed to pass lazily. I always felt time moved slowly but looking back at it, I have no idea how it went so fast. As I grew up, I got even fatter. I started to think that my deadliest attack might just be sitting on my opponents. I must have weighed in at two hundred kilos or more. At least, as I got older I grew to a good height. I had no idea how tall I really was exactly but I thought it might be around two meters.

Gregory never changed a bit over all the years. He never seemed to age and he never seemed able to get a job. Instead we were close as ever and did almost everything together. He still slept in the tree at night but otherwise he was with me from morning to night.

As the years passed, I taught Gregory everything I could. I had gone through most of high school so it was easy enough to make sure he had basics like arithmetic and reading. Writing was a bit of a problem for him as he was too small to make letters big enough for me to read.

Gregory seemed to really enjoy my stories about science and history. Of course, the history I knew was of another world and I was not sure if science even worked in this world given that it had things like magic in it. Still I thought it was important for Gregory to learn about these things just in case and it helped me keep the knowledge fresh in my head.

After all of this teaching, Gregory and I got a lot better at understanding one another. It was practically telepathy. Well I was told later that was what it looked like but in fact our communication is just a result of us spending so much time together. As a result of this, I was able to learn many important things from him too.

For example, one day I had an idea and asked Gregory if he could see my stats. My status screen had no numbers attached to it. I was curious if this was an 'oversight' on the part of the goddesses or if everyone in this world only knew general descriptions of their stats. There were bound to be more than termites and giant monsters in this world right? There had to be others, I just hadn't met them yet.

When I asked about my idea of seeing stats more precisely, Gregory did one of his patented flips. This got me really excited and then a sign filled with squiggles appeared in front of me. I swear they were moving. The sign looked like some kind of notification window you would see in a video game but it was hovering in front of me. In real life. I may have gotten a little excited. After all what could be more exciting than finding out that there were more game like elements in this world. Soon I would find out how this world worked and then make myself into the brokenly over-powered hero I was meant to be. Any day now.

I tried reading the squiggles multiple times but was getting nowhere no matter how I tried. I even tried reading them upside down. It was not funny Gregory. I had to sit on him to get him to stop rolling around on the ground like that. I didn't want him to get dirty with all that rolling about in dirt that is all. My sitting on him had nothing to do with him laughing at me non stop like that. Besides laughing for that long can't be good for someone right?

Once I had settled George down, I had to figure out what in the world this thing trying to tell me. I spent ten minutes trying to touch various bits of the window to make it go away before I finally succeeded. Of course, as soon as I managed this Gregory just shook at me and made the window pop up again. It was another minute before I found what was apparently the right bit and it closed down again. This time though there was a little window with Gregory's name and his current HP and MP below it. I thought it was just like a video game. I decided to just stay in a party from then on.

After half an hour of talking and a not so fun game of guessing how low numbers can go, I learned that Gregory could see my HP and MP. HP is a representation of how much damage one can take before they die. MP is used to fuel magical abilities and spells. My HP and MP were both zero. Yes, I had zero HP. No wonder the goddesses were laughing so hard at my status screen. After I talked to Gregory a bit more, I learned that zero HP is merely on the verge of dying while anything less than that is actually dead. So I could take exactly one damage before I died.

Luckily all these years the termites had been kind enough to keep up a weak magical shield of some kind on me. It wasn't very strong. At most it could mitigate the damage I would take from hitting my head on a tree branch but it was enough apparently to prevent me from having died all the times I tripped or stubbed my toe on a root. Once I figured out what was going on I may have broken out in a cold sweat. I definitely did not huddle under my tree for a day or so in terror of how close I was to death. Gregory exaggerates that story all the time. One should take what he says with a grain of salt at all times. He is always making things up.

Gregory had an ingenious solution to the problem of my low health. Specifically, he was a termite who could use powerful earth magic. Gregory was able to use his earth magic to make a protective earthen armour that would keep me safe from damage up to a certain limit which was much higher than the shield that I had up to now. Basically, as long as the damage was not too high, I would take no damage at all. It turned my pale skin into a tanned brown while it was on but otherwise there was no sign he had cast it on me. As for how much damage it could take, I had no real way of finding out and we both decided it was better to not experiment. Apparently, it was definitely not up to the task of stopping a monster from munching on me so either way I was still in constant danger of being one hit K.O.ed if I wasn't careful. This new armour was a huge plus for me though as it meant I essentially did not have to worry about dying from hitting my head on a low hanging branch anymore. Gregory was the best. I was certain that we would be friends forever.

Around this time I also learned that Gregory had two other abilities. He could create a small amount of what I thought was acid. It was a very powerful acid from what I could tell but he could only make a tiny amount of it. He is tiny after all. It was a bit of a miracle he could protect me with earth magic given the size difference.

His other ability was to use earth magic to improve his strength. Apparently the acid was used to weaken the wood of my tree and the strength was needed to actually eat the weakened wood. Given Gregory was strong enough to pick up the giant T-Rex like monsters, I really did not want to think about how strong the wood of my tree was to need that much strength to eat it after it had been weakened.

Gregory was clearly my over powered companion. I just needed to become the even more overpowered hero. Just for those keeping track, Gregory had at least four super cool abilities: his earth armour, his poison, his increased strength, and his acid. Compared to my zero HP, Gregory had around a hundred thousand HP. His MP was similar. I will work hard in the future Gregory, I promise!

However, Gregory's stats presented another terrifying problem. If a termite had that many HP, I really did not want to know how many HP the various monsters living nearby had. If their HP was that high, how high were their stats? They seemed to love the idea of eating me and I was clearly not in any shape to stop them. My previous goal of becoming stealthy seemed more and more like the best idea I had ever had. I was seriously never going to try fighting those things. This life might be boring and filled with curses but it was the only one I had.

I had no idea what my other stats were but I could assume they were low. I originally found it impossible to even see the movement of the monsters jumping out to eat me. Even though it got better as that emotionless voice kept saying incomprehensible things and I gained new skills or achievements on my stats window, by the time I looked in my late teens they still seemed very quick in comparison to myself. To put it more precisely, before it seemed like they were teleporting while after years of effort it now only appeared like they were moving very fast. This meant the monsters had much higher agility than I did and if that stat was much higher than mine, I assumed all of the other stats would be higher as well.

I spent a while cursing at the goddesses once I realized all over again just how deadly my surroundings were and how pathetic this form was in comparison.

With a lot of guessing and some fairly creative charades, Gregory showed me what the other stats on my status window meant.

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Job: This determines what bonus stats you get on levelling up and provides a bonus to learning certain skills.

Level: Just like in a video game this is a measure of your overall power.

Experience: Gained by killing things. Needed in order to level up.

HP: This is a measure of how damaged one is. HP is equal to Health times your level.

MP: This is used to cast spells. MP was equal to the Magic stat times your level.

Strength: Overall muscle strength and hand eye coordination.

Agility: Reflexes and speed of movement.

Health: Ability to resist disease, poison, and determines HP.

Magic: Determines MP and has a small effect on your spells.

Resistance: Ability to resist damage, abnormal status effects, and magic.

Charm: Determines people's first impression of you.

Skills:

These are a measure of how good you are at some activity. Attaining higher levels of skill do not provide any bonuses. Skills never deteriorate over time.

Achievements:

Achievements improve or degrade base stats. Which stats are changed and by how much varies depending on the achievement.

Titles:

Generally useless but they can be a cause for fame or infamy.

Blessings and Curses:

They are given by the Gods. They are generally permanent.

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It took me a while to figure it out with the help of Gregory but apparently the Curse of Babel was a curse that means I am unable to speak in anything other than my native language. This was probably why I failed at coming up with a sign language to use with Gregory. Absolutely not because I was already terrible with languages. I had not been looking forward to learning the language(s) of this world once I got out of this forest and found people to talk to but it was somehow worse knowing that I would never be able to learn their language and instead I would need to convince them to learn mine.

The Curse of Obscurity did not mean that people would forget about me or find it hard to remember what I had done. Instead, I would always remain unpopular and unknown. No matter how heroic my deeds in the coming years might be, no one except those who were there would attribute them to me. Even those who saw me doing something amazing might well claim it was someone or something else. Likewise, they might decide to hog the glory for themselves or the story would not be believed by those hearing it. If I was honest, this was the curse that I minded least at the time and has been the most annoying to deal with later in my life.