Chapter three: it happened because I thought it was cool

I had finally gotten a moment to myself, or so I thought. The moment I closed my eyes for quiet contemplation, something else popped up. It was a very peculiar and very familiar looking… ‘interface’.

[Corentin de Helvetius]

Level: 200

Race: Human (Human Aspect)

Health: 27894/27894

Mana: Infinite

Stamina: Infinite

Physical Attack: 5324

Magic Attack: 4991

Critical hit Chance: 87.92%

Critical Damage: 4.4x

Physical Defence Pierce: 239

Magic Defence Pierce: 218

Physical Defence: 652

Magic Defence: 614

Magic: 2199

Wisdom: 1951

Dexterity: 2720

Strength: 2982

Agility: 2467

“What?!” I jumped out of my bed screaming.

“Huh? What’s wrong Corentin?! Does it hurt somewhere?!” Maybelle almost fell out of her chair and followed in the shouting.

“Huh? Oh, erm… sorry, I just…” the status screen hadn’t disappeared even when I opened my eyes. It floated around my vision whilst staying just translucent enough not to majorly obstruct anything. I tried touching it, but my hand phased through it as though nothing was there. “This is… no, it couldn’t be,” I thought. This was the status menu for my character in the online game I had been playing in my previous life, down to the exact digits. “What does this mean? Did my skills also…?” I mumbled under my breath.

“C- Corentin? Are you okay?” Maybelle reached out and touched my forehead to measure my fever. “Mmm, I can’t tell…”

“Sorry sis, I didn’t mean to shout like that,” then a thought came to me. “Actually, can you take a look at my hand?” I reached forward.

“Your hand? Does it hurt?”

‘Click’

The moment she heard that sound, Maybelle’s body fell limp onto my bed. I nudged her around a little and called out to her a few times to see if she would respond; nothing. With the sound of her soft breathing I could tell she had fallen into a deep sleep. “It… it actually works.”

[Hypnosis]: Temporarily places targets to sleep. Targets will be woken up when attacked; while under the ‘sleep’ condition, the target will receive 50% extra damage. Cannot be used against certain targets.

“I… didn’t expect it to actually work,” which would also mean these stats were real. I felt an intense urge to test out these abilities right away, unfortunately there wasn’t anything appropriate I could test on. Speaking of which, I took a closer examination around the room and my suspicions were correct: this room resembled a ‘modern’ hospital room. It was white everywhere with curtains that couldn’t be made in a fantasy world, but the most damning piece of evidence was the tall buildings outside my window. High-rise apartment buildings and skyscrapers, down below I could faintly hear the sounds of cars coming and going. “Yeah, hmm… doesn’t seem like any kind of fantasy world.” On the ceiling were lightbulbs and in the corner of there was what looked like a security camera. “Then what’s the point of these stats?” I felt a little irritated. A modern setting and superpowers, well, I suppose if you mix them together you certainly can get some kind of interesting stories, but I wasn’t the biggest fan of the ‘superhero’ genre. “Haaaa…” I let out a long sigh.

It all felt like a massive waste of potential; a grand treasure that couldn’t be utilized.

“Well, I guess I can have some fun with it,” I dragged myself off the bed and stood in front of one of the mirrors attached to the wall. Actually, I was quite curious as to how this one might work in real life.

[Stealth Field]: Temporarily masks the user’s presence and physical appearance, rendering them invisible to onlookers. If the opponent has a high enough detection skill, the user may be found out!

As the skill description read, I could barely see the outlines of myself through the mirror. The closest comparison I could give was that it was similar to those active camouflage things used in those sci-fi movies. Again, the application of this skill was extremely limited outside of military use. I undid my stealth and returned to bed.

“Next… oh, what about other people’s stats?” I turned to my sister who had fallen peacefully asleep by the side of the bed and tried to read her status.

[Maybelle de Helvetius]

Level: 7

Race: Human (Elf Aspect)

“Oh?! Wait, that’s a lot less detailed than mine,” I thought but soon figured out it was because it had been shortened. On the bottom right corner of the menu there was a small button labelled ‘detailed’ and tapping onto it expanded her status screen.

[Maybelle de Helvetius]

Level: 7

Race: Human (Elf Aspect)

Health: 120/120

Mana: 185/185

Stamina: 230/230

Physical Attack: 12

Magic Attack: 18

Critical hit Chance: 1%

Critical Damage: 1.1x

Physical Defence Pierce: 0

Magic Defence Pierce: 0

Physical Defence: 7

Magic Defence: 8

Magic: 21

Wisdom: 17

Dexterity: 26

Strength: 11

Agility: 16

“Nice, wait what’s this? Elf Aspect?” I quickly reopened my status menu to compare, and my race read as ‘Human (Human Aspect)’. “Interesting,” it could be that there’s hope after all. The other stats aside, the fact that my sister even has points in ‘magic’ must mean she’s capable of using it somehow.

“Oh yeah, what about my items?” aside from it stinging a little, I might actually be okay with losing most of my items if one thing remained the same. The most useful item in a world like this was ‘money’. The problem was that currency in the game was treated as part of the interface instead of being its own physical item, which made it vague on whether it was possible to even drop. “Please let it work!” I prayed and retrieved a metallic gold coin from my inventory.

They were larger and heavier than I had expected, or perhaps it was due to my hands being smaller. Regardless, the important thing was it was possible to retrieve. Resting in my hands was an ornate gold coin that might look more at home in a museum, but I let out a sigh of relief. If nothing else, it would still be theoretically possible to melt down these gold coins into blocks to sell. I mean, it’d be a cumbersome thing to do but it was better than nothing. I also had about 2.14 billion gold coins, but that was just the amount on my person; I had several guild castles and the storages in there were also filled to the max – maximum being 2.14 billion. It wasn’t because I was particularly good at playing the game or handling money or anything. Nah, it was because the game’s economy went down the shitter after a certain incident involving item duplication. Well, sparing the details, the economy basically broke after that and the developers didn’t know how to fix it. You could exchange 1 billion gold coins for about $100 USD, of which I exchanged a lot. Like, embarrassing amounts.

But okay, gold was accessible. “Next, my items,” I scrolled down the list of items in my inventory. “How about a ‘Crypt Dagger’?” it was a simple item made of stone with etchings of gargoyles on it. It surprisingly heavy for a small thing. I mean, I called it ‘small’ but it was as big as my entire arm, which wasn’t odd considering the shrunken state of my body. In the same way I read my sister’s stats, I tried to do the same for this item.

[Crypt Dagger]

Weapon Tier: Exotic

Weapon Type: Dagger

Attack Rate: 1450 ~ 1550

Attack Speed: Very Fast

Critical Damage Amplification: +92% (+0.92x)

Equip bonus: +260 Dexterity, +255 Agility, +240 Strength

Special Ability #1: Imbues all attacks with the ‘Darkness’ attribute. Additional 50 Darkness damage upon hit.

Special Ability #2: If the wielder is about to receive more than 5000 damage, temporarily grants a state of invulnerability. (Invulnerability duration: 3 seconds). (Cooldown: 90 seconds)

Equip Prerequisite: Over 1500 Dexterity.

“Excellent. It’s just how I remembered it,” then I slapped myself. There’s nothing ‘excellent’ about a dagger that can’t be used in this modern setting.

“Stats, skills and items are all accounted for,” I nodded. The only thing that’s different is the addition of these ‘aspects’. The quickest way is probably to ask someone or read a book on them. There was a possibility no one knew what they were, and I’d just look like a crazy person. Though with my current appearance the worst-case scenario was probably just being labelled as a child with an overactive imagination.

“Now then, what to do next…”