《46 Year Old Syndrome》 1) I gained pain and a skill? Author''s note: The first two Chapters are fairly short(around 700 words), the 3rd is about 1400, then from the fourth and on they generally range from 2-3k. When I create a book out of this the first two chapters will likely get more details on his thoughts but still follow the same events. At the end in a spoiler is a city map I''ve added as of Nov 19th. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Sunday, August 30, 2015 This afternoon, around 3pm, I was two blocks from Walmart when a sudden hammer of pain hit my brain and a blue transparent window popped up in front of my face.
Due to your actions you have gained a Skill. The skill {Walking} (Novice, Passive) EXP: 1.4%, has been created.
The text floated between me and the footbridge I had been about to cross. I looked around in confusion and the text window following my eyes. The text was confusing not because I had never seen it before. It was confusing because I had only seen it in novels and manga before. I knew the next step. That was to use the voice commands. Putting aside how shaky my grip on reality was I started to try out various commands while standing in the middle of the bike path. The text started to fade away around that time. A good twenty minutes was spent looking either insane, or busy with on a Bluetooth, while my head throbbed with a serious headache. "Status", "Status Window", "Status Screen", "Menu", "Menu Window", "Menu Screen", "Skill Window", "Skill", "Skills", "Skill Menu", "Skill Tree", "Game Menu", "Inventory", "Identify", "Item box", "Window", "Title", "Map", "Self-Status Window", and any other command I could vaguely remember from games, novels, anime or manga. Getting desperate I tried things like "Experience", "Level", "Quest", "Help". Okay, "Help" should have been near the start but I had a headache and wasn''t thinking clearly. Eventually the headache pushed me into going onwards to Walmart to pick up the bread and a couple other things so that I could get home and take some pain pills The walk wasn''t long but after a block I noticed that the headache was getting stronger and my body was feeling tired all over. By the time I was inside Walmart, and started to shop, the pain was severe enough to call for a cab instead of walking home. Outside I only waited a few minutes but my old enemy the sun seemed especially painful if I didn''t keep closing and resting my eyes. The cab ride home was quiet ,but the pain didn''t diminish. After paying the driver I then staggered inside, barely able to drag my legs. I vaguely remember letting the dog out from my office, throwing all the bags in the fridge without trying to sort out the non food stuff, grabbing 2 Advil gel caps and chewing them. Normally that''s a punch in the back of my throat that I can barely take without gagging but I drank a bit of water and didn''t notice. Collapsing on the bed I fell asleep fast despite the pain. Find this and other great novels on the author''s preferred platform. Support original creators! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Around 10pm, roughly 6 hours later, I woke up mostly pain free but still feeling tired. The dog was rolling around the bed, staring me down whenever I made eye contact, so I took her out. With no real plan in mind I blocked her in the office again with her baby gate, locked the house, and went for a walk. I had the vague idea that walking might trigger a {Walking} window again but no real faith since it hadn''t appeared during the rest of my walk earlier. I just needed some fresh air and junk food to think. First stop was the corner store three blocks away for ice cream. Second stop was the Timmies five or six blocks for a frosted cinnamon roll. Okay, 2 frosted cinnamon rolls, but I liked sugar when I was in pain. The pain and tiredness were slowly building again but much slower earlier. I headed for home to try sleeping again. A bit over a block from my place the second hammer of pain hit.
Through use of the skill {Walking} it has reached Beginner level. {Walking} (Beginner, Passive) EXP: 0.9%.
I didn''t have the mental capacity left to try out more commands before the window faded. Even though the second hammer blow was weaker than the first I was already hurting. I slowly dragged my ass the rest of the way home. Let the dog free, took some random pain pills, collapsed on top of my bed, and fell asleep instantly. Spoiler : 2) Who is crazier, me or the dog? Monday, August 31, 2015 I woke up around 7am. That is barely after my normal bedtime, so I was still a bit tired. The dog was doing her usual tricks on the bed. Rolls were followed by stretches which lead to snuggling for a few seconds before she went for my face. Sorting through what happened yesterday while holding back 8lbs of hyperactivity was a bit tough. Yesterday''s headache had damped down to a weak throbbing pain. I tested voice commands again, with no luck at all. I''ve always been pretty confident that it was everyone else who was crazy, but gaining some type of skill system, and leveling it, shook that. The pain helped reassure me that I wasn''t dreaming, so either it happened or I had a brain tumor. Which left tons of unanswered questions. Since I didn''t trust or like my doctor I decided to leave the tumor option for later. Was I alone in getting it? How did I actually get a skill called {Walking}? Isn''t that too trivial? Would I get a skill called {Breathing} or {Heart beat} next? Actually if it was even possible to get more skills, how do I get one? If I jumped up and down will I get {Jump} or {Jumping}? With the dog preventing more than 3 seconds of coherent thought I gave up and took her out to pee. After a quick breakfast of buttered toast, a caffeine pill, a vitamin C, a children''s vitamin, and an allergy pill (I like me dem pills) I hit the internet. Hours of searching news sites ended with nothing weird coming up. Well, I mean new types of weird. Entering ''blue transparent windows'', and variations, in several search engines didn''t get me anything useful either. By noon I had given up and was browsing YouTube channels to distract from my frustration and the tiny pounding that was still going on in my head. Eventually I reached a compilation of video''s of Russians shooting at other drivers. I zoned out while one angry shooter in particular chanted "§ä§Ó§à§ð §Þ§Ñ§ä§î" as he fired. A helpful subtitle explained it as "Fuck your mother!". Down came the hammer of blue screen pain, as hard as yesterdays first one.
Due to your actions you have gained a Skill. The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.The skill {Russian} (Novice, Passive) EXP: 0.1%, has been created. Due to your unlocking two skills you have unlocked the Skills Window.
With the routine established, I went upstairs, took more pain pills, and left the painful world behind for a bit. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Around 6pm I woke up for the second time with a minor headache. The first thing was obviously saying "Skills"... which did nothing. "Skills Window" popped up a blue transparent window though.
{Russian} (Novice, Passive) EXP: 0.1%. {Walking} (Beginner, Passive) EXP: 13.5%.
I couldn''t interact with it. I tried touching it. I tried using voice commands to pick a skill. Commands of "Help Russian", "Examine Walking", were ignored by the window, and the rest of the universe. Getting nowhere with that and not being in the mood for further pain today I showered, made supper and started researching. I didn''t want to accidentally gain skills if they were always going to be accompanied by massive headaches. I needed to figure out what was going on or at least time new skills to when I could rest up from them. The rest of the day was spent browsing news sites and various game like stories like The Gamer, Legendary Moonlight Sculptor, and Alterworld while making ever longer lists. If I wasn''t crazy there was bound to be more to this whole thing. Around 4am I gave up thinking about possible skills, stats, resistances, titles, inventories, quest and so on and went to bed. Drifting off to sleep I tried to ignore the dog clawing the comforter into a mound. A good 15 minutes of clawing later it was resting on a 6 inch tower looking down at me, the slave it ruled. I broke eye contact, rolled over, tried to ignore the thought it might be the one with a brain tumor, and fell asleep. 3) A punch in the face would hurt less. Tuesday, September 1st, 2015 The alarm on my cell woke me at 11:40 to get ready for my afternoon shift. My head was aching a bit as I went through my morning routine while sorting out the previous day''s events and ideas. The first plan was to not gain any new skills or level {Walking} up. Tuesday was my first work day since the skills appeared. I had a short afternoon shift and somewhat longer evening one. My budget wouldn''t cover skipping work, and working in pain or trying to recover would be less than fun when I had all of Wednesday to test things instead. Researching on my work days of Tuesday / Friday/ Saturday, testing and leveling on the other 4 days made sense. The second plan was to try to see if I could observe things like titles or names around people. If I was living in some type of game world interface then extremely basic information shouldn''t be skill based. Advanced information like hit points or peoples stats might require an inspect, or observe skill but not basic stuff I hoped. While headed to work I tried various methods while walking the five blocks to the gym where I cleaned. First up was looking above people''s heads when they weren''t looking at me. With no results after the first half dozen I switched to letting my eyes go out of focus and trying to notice if there were anything like textboxes or subtle shadows around people. I hoped that if I found any kind of clue I could find a way to bring it into focus. The result was a big fat nothing. When I reached work I had a chance to test idea number 3. Since I knew my coworkers and some members names I tried labeling them in my mind. When that didn''t work after a while I tried concentrating and saying their name and job title out loud from a discrete distance. No luck. With the shift almost over and no results I ran with my final idea. Using the member''s name and imaginary titles. Like ''Ralph the Tall, Hairy, Steroid Dealer'' or ''Jacob the Urinal Bard''. No results on that either. I had hoped there might be some type of autocorrect or an actually correct nickname might pop up. There was no positive results but my mood was a bit improved when I left work. I did notice one thing over the previous few hours, my general walking had improved. Whenever I wasn''t paying attention my speed increased a bit and the actual steps were smoother. I used to be a power walker so I knew the speed wasn''t anywhere near the max I was capable after my injuries, age and laziness were included. But it was faster than my normal casual speed. I checked the skills window.
{Russian} (Novice, Passive) EXP: 0.1%. {Walking} (Beginner, Passive) EXP: 41.8%.
Already reaching 41.8% so early in the day, with the 5 hour night shift still to go, was a bit worrisome. All I could do was head home and do as little as possible physically while thinking a bit more on titles until it was time for the second shift. I thought a bit about stats but I really needed to focus and sort explore one thing at a time so put it off for later. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Supper was done and it was off to work, after taking the dog out for her second trip outside today. She was a very stylish tall fake blonde in her late 30''s, he was a very fit guy in his early 30''s. Attractive but working at a gym I saw a bunch of more attractive women every day so she didn''t stand out for that. What made her stand out was she was always well dressed, even on the days she wore casual clothes instead of work clothes to the gym. Her workout outfits were also stylish and perhaps a bit more expensive than practical. I had been thinking of skills as things like running, sneaking, fighting, cooking or even computer hacking. But looking at her I drifted off for a few minutes thinking that maybe there were skills like fashion sense, disguise or other clothing based skills. Down came the hammer of doom and pain.
Due to your actions you have gained a Skill. The skill {Sense Bloodlust} (Novice, Passive) EXP: 12.6%, has been created. Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
After reading the transparent window I looked around only then noticing that her husband was glaring at me. He must have thought I was checking her out as she worked out. I turned away and tried to ignore the couple as I dealt with the massive headache. I thought that if he had punched me in the face it would have hurt less than one of these headaches. After composing myself a bit I noticed a few things about the headaches. This was the third skill creation headache and it was a bit easier to compare them now that I had three so close together. The main distraction was that I kept feeling like I was being poked with small knives or large pins on the side closest to the husband. I went to the bike room ,out of his view, to think a bit. The first thing was that each of the skill creation headaches seemed to be roughly the same pain, but I was able to handle it easier this third time. It was too confusing to explain even to myself but the closest I came was imagining the pain hammer hitting a rock that was a bit heavier, thicker, and less shatterproof than the previous times. The second thing was that the skill level increases were far lighter. I''d only had one when {Walking} went from Novice to Beginner so it was hard to judge but I guessed it was only half or maybe a third as strong. The final thing was I now was tired all over. Almost like a flu''s aching tiredness. Luckily I was down to the last half hour of the shift. The unlucky part was the last bit of the shift put me within view of the angry member a lot as I finished cleaning some machines. Hot knives kept poking into my skin as I worked. With that, and the headache going strong, the final minutes dragged on. Even after he left the cardio area I occasionally felt the stabbings through the walls. As soon as I was done I said goodnight to my boss and hurried home. Just as I reached City Hall, and was cutting through the block as a short cut, I saw the damned blue window for a moment before I blacked out and hit the ground. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I woke lying on the stairs that were part of my shortcut. I panicked and tried to ignore the windows as I looked around for people. It was impossible to ignore the writing even if the windows didn''t seem to block any light.
Through use of the skill {Walking} it has reached Intermediate level. {Walking} (Intermediate, Passive) EXP: 0.2%.
My vision was messed up by the migraine level pain but the window was clear and sharply defined. I realized I hadn''t checked my skills window before leaving the club or I would have known I was so close to the skill leveling up. Even if I did notice I''m not sure what could have done differently though. As the first window faded a new one spawned.
By draining your Mental Stamina completely three days in a row you have gained a new title. Title "Slightly Masochistic" has been gained. Title "Slightly Masochistic" has the effect of converting 5% of pain into pleasure.
I just stared blankly until it went away.
Due to your unlocking a title you can now equip your titles with the Title Window. Do you want to equip title "Slightly Masochistic", yes/no?
"Hell no," I shouted. The window silently faded. Even if the headaches, or a punch to the face, would literally hurt less it would likely limit me from getting pain nullifying skills in the future. And even my muddy head knew that if someone else could see titles, and saw that, I would die inside. I slowly dragged my broken soul and exhausted body the last half block home and did the usual before passing out. 4) Grinding pain. No, wait! I meant skills! Wednesday, September 2nd, 2015 Waking was painful since I remembered the fiasco the night before too swiftly. "Skills Window"
{Russian} (Novice, Passive) EXP: 0.1%. {Sense Bloodlust} (Novice, Passive) EXP: 92.9%. {Walking} (Intermediate, Passive) EXP: 2.4%.
Looking at the skills I realized I had dodged a bullet. If {Sense Bloodlust} had leveled up first I might have passed out at work. And the walk home might have resulted in me being in a coma at the side of the road when I hit Intermediate in {Walking} instead of just passing out briefly. Even though on Monday I''d thought up the idea of checking some of the how-to books at the library today I decided not to do it. I had wondered if some of the books might grant skills without trying to figure out how to gain new ones. I still wasn''t sure exactly why I had gained the skills so far. Gaining EXP in them afterwards seemed obvious at least. Why did I have a skill in Russian? I browsed a few Japanese songs that day on YouTube and know some Japanese but didn''t get a skill. Why did I gain Sense Bloodlust when I barely even noticed the husband was there and didn''t notice him glaring at all? And how the hell did I get {Walking} in the first place. I''d been wondering about the last point all along but having literally no clue on that one meant I had no starting point. What I was sure of was that I didn''t want to drain my Mental Stamina, whatever that was, entirely a fourth day in a row. I really, really didn''t want a title like ''Now 5% more Masochistic'' or whatever it would be. So I got up and went through my 1pm morning routine and then left the house with my trusty sun defying sunglasses around 2pm. I headed for a walk into the bushy area a few blocks away. The layout of the city could be described as a deformed Y and from downtown there was some undeveloped land only a few blocks due to the rocks, swampy areas, and old railway land making other directions easier to develop. My thought was that harder terrain should be faster in leveling up the one skill that seemed simple. Controlled leveling gave one benefit in that I knew when the pain would come. A second benefit would be if I could properly judge how hard the hit to my Mental Stamina is compared to new skills. I had guessed it to be one half or a third. If one level up is half a new skill then I could maybe take three level up''s with just a few minutes passed out. If it was a third of the pain of a new skill then maybe four level up''s. If going from different levels were exactly the same, and the same in all skills. So far I had only gone from Novice to Beginner to Intermediate in one skill. I hadn''t reached Beginner in the other two skills yet. A lot of if''s. It would be a lot easier if I could see things like stats. I got a bit of a surprise crossing at the lights a few blocks from the bush. I got a brief stab of {Sense Bloodlust} from the guy waiting to turn through where I was walking even though I was going at a fast pace. Reaching the far side I quietly checked and {Sense Bloodlust} had reached 96.2% from 92.9%. Walking had only reached 3.1% from 2.4%. {Walking} was leveling a lot slower than it had the previous day. The most likely answer was I was right and that higher levels needed stronger stimulus. The worst case was that each level needed more XP equivalent per level. The bush wasn''t going to level {Sense Bloodlust} obviously since it''s pretty empty other than occasional kids playing. However the driver had given me an idea. I still had three streets to cross and one of them was very busy with no lights. After two blocks I almost reached the busy street. A hundred feet or so before the intersection I started faking a slow limp. I had no idea if it was believable but I''d hurt my right ankle and leg enough times to think it was somewhat realistic. I waited for the right gap in the traffic and made my way slowly across. I didn''t want the cars to stop for me, just slow when they saw me a bit ahead. Mini doom hammer came down before I was halfway across even though I didn''t block anyone. If it counted I paid in pain for their half second delay in speeding around.
Through use of the skill {Sense Bloodlust} it has reached Beginner level. {Sense Bloodlust} (Beginner, Passive) EXP: 21.5%.
Really? Roughly 25% just for crossing the intersection slowly a 1/4 block away? Some damn angry drivers out there. Trying to compare the pain was still hard to do. I knew they taught rating pain for some chronic pain sufferers but it wasn''t anything I''d tried before. I''d never tried to rate a kick to the crotch versus a twisted ankle for example. All that said, I hoped the level up was around a third or less. That would mean that if all the levels were equal I could level up three times safely, and with a bit of rest, perhaps a fourth. If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it. Another block later I reached the rocks that fronted the lightly wooded area. I then began quickly walking from one granite section to the next as I picked the most awkward path through it I possibly could. The only wild card would be if I gain a new skill like hiking. I was fairly sure that I wouldn''t because the definition of hiking has walking in it but I couldn''t be sure. I thought hiking would just demand a high skill in {Walking}. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Two hours of wandering over rocks, between trees, under branches and through ferns had left me tired and my head aching. {Walking} had reached Advanced 9.4%, which was apparently the next step after Intermediate. That left one more potential level up before I should rest to be safe. One benefit was I felt much more sure-footed immediately after reaching Advanced. Following the train tracks that led out of the bush away from where I entered was a good example of it. Normally I''d either slightly hop from crosstie to crosstie or mix up my steps in the loose rock base between them. It was fairly awkward if I didn''t place my feet properly. But with Advanced {Walking} my feet placed themselves smoothly and my pace was faster. It wasn''t anything I couldn''t do before, just less effort, and no need to pay attention. Which led me to a new theory. That maybe I was leveling {Walking} so fast because it was catching up fast to my theoretical best movement. Keeping watch for trains I decided to test that. I thought I could walk the rail with a bit of patience before the skill. I hadn''t done it since I was much younger but it was easily doable if I went a bit slow. So I hopped up on the rail, and only looking ahead, started walking a decent pace. I didn''t slip or fall. That cinched it for me. The skill let me repeatedly do, at a decent pace, what I could previously do only briefly. So if I could walk a tightrope, with no wind, for two feet then a skill would let me repeat that for a few dozen feet with no problems. The other thing I noticed was that using skills seems to put a strain on my mind and entire body. Even though my legs should be the sore point I felt a bit sore all over. And while I thought I should have somewhat recovered from the two blows of level up pain, I hadn''t. So my new theory was that using skills slowly used up some of the Mental Stamina the window last night mentioned. I wasn''t really sure though since I couldn''t see it. Maybe it just didn''t regenerate without rest. The soreness all over though might be something like a Physical Stamina stat distributing the tiredness evenly. Reaching where the tracks crossed the highway I switched to following the highway to a nearby intersection. It was only a block from where I originally got {Walking}. The intersection was one of the busiest spots in the city. The highway cut across the road leading to the Mall and Walmart. It had dedicated turn signals it so with that extra step it was slow to cycle around to people who just barely missed the previous light. Sitting down on the sidewalk nearby, I stared at the luckless drivers waiting for their light. I didn''t make eye contact since I had sunglasses on but a few drivers noticed me looking in their general direction. I quickly started collecting {Sense Bloodlust} EXP from various people. Even though I wasn''t directly staring down anyone it still gave them an outlet for their road rage. After less than 30 minutes I gained the window I wanted and the pain as a punishment for trolling.
Through use of the skill {Sense Bloodlust} it has reached Intermediate level. {Sense Bloodlust} (Intermediate, Passive) EXP: 19.7%.
That was enough for the afternoon. It was almost supper and I was near my limit in pain tolerance. Another skill up or a new skill and I''d would have been face down on the sidewalk. So I headed home. At home, I made supper, took the dog for a short walk, then started to try and judge how napping restored the Mental Stamina. Two to three hours of cumulative sleep seemed to restore one level up. I thought longer uninterrupted sleep would give better results but since I couldn''t fall asleep on command it was impossible to judge. I finished the night browsing the public library''s online listing of books trying to figure out what to try reading on Thursday. If things turn out anything like all the books I''ve read over the years then learning certain skills would give a lot of benefits. A last check before bed, "Skills Window".
{Russian} (Novice, Passive) EXP: 0.1%. {Sense Bloodlust} (Intermediate, Passive) EXP: 21.2% {Walking} (Advanced, Passive) EXP: 17.8%.
5) The old fashioned way my grandfather used to do it. Thursday, September 3rd, 2015 Stealth > Evasion > Escape > Fighting > Talking I was pondering that chain of thought in bed this morning while fending the dog''s paws from my throat. Her constant barrel rolls always seemed to end with her paws at my throat or her butt in my face if I wasn''t careful. There was bound to be lots of skills I could learn. Perhaps even things like {Poker} to make money with. But since I didn''t know if anyone else got this skill system and anything flashy would bring attention it seemed best to have a plan to keep mind and body together. A plan to not accidentally trigger new skills was also a must. Or gain those potential skills in a way I wouldn''t pass out on a street at night again. First, not being noticed in the first place seemed to be the best type of skills. And if you were noticed then evading that attention. Being able to escape from captivity seemed out of order but there''s a lot of things you can''t fight like someone threatening to shoot the damn dog. And skills in talking only work if the other person is willing to talk. If it''s an animal or someone stubborn then talking things through rarely seems to work. After browsing and thinking of ideas the last few days I couldn''t think of any books that were likely to explain Stealth in the city''s Public Library. There was likely some with small chapters about camouflage in hunting but there was two problems with that. A small section of a book might not give a skill. And while camouflage can be urban, its more useful with specific clothing in wooded areas. I could likely find a set of urban camouflage at the army surplus store at the other end of town but 99% of the time I''d just stand out wearing it. The more I thought of it the idea of a single skill that did multiple things like quietly sneak, hide in shadows, and camouflage or blend in, seemed unlikely. After all I got {Walking} which implied {Running}, {Jumping} etc. would be separate skills instead of something like {Ground Movement} or the more amusing name {Moving Legs} as one big skill. Which lead me to list a few possibilities as {Sneak} / {Silent Movement}, {Hide} / {Concealment} and {Camouflage} / {Cover}. Next was Evasion as in Stealth is broken then evade people looking. At first I thought of {Running}, {Jumping}, {Climbing} as in a parkour type evasion. But even {Walking} could count if trying to blend in a crowd while moving smoothly through it. The other part wasn''t obvious at first but knowing when you have evaded or lost stealth is critical too. In games it''s usually obvious, you all of a sudden lose your slow movement speed in sneak or an icon pops up. I already have {Sense Bloodlust}, but that only works for people actively thinking of hurting me. Doesn''t warn me if say a security guard is around a corner reading a book, ready to drop it and jump me if I step into view. So gaining some type of {Sense Presence}, {Detection} or even {Sixth Sense} is vital. Next would be escaping skills. Like picking locks, escaping handcuffs / straight jackets, understanding security systems, and chewing through steel bars. Looking up picking locks and escaping handcuffs lead to Escapology which lead to adding another potentially useful idea, contortion. From that my list was {Contortion}, {Pick Lock}, {Escape}, and {Security System Knowledge}. Of those I was only fairly comfortable with the first two. The other two seemed dubious names and would knowledge be a skill? Or would it be something like {Disable Security System} and {Avoid Security System Detection}? For fighting it seemed likely there was some type of unarmed combat which would be a combo of styles similar to MMA or specific things like boxing, kick boxing, etc. There should also be some type of skills for knives or sticks, light firearms, and heavier military weapons like squad ones. Maybe even a sniping skill. Since I don''t own a weapon and it''s Canada I''ll concentrate on {Unarmed combat} or specific styles if needed, and maybe {Knife Fighting}. Finally, talking is obviously the {Persuasion} skill you see everywhere. {Acting}, {Bribery}, and {Threaten} might exist too. Though how much a broke, chubby, middle aged guy can bribe or threaten is dubious. {Sneak} / {Silent Movement} {Hide} / {Concealment} {Camouflage} / {Cover} {Running} {Jumping} {Climbing} {Sense Presence} / {Detection} / {Sixth Sense} {Contortion} {Pick Lock} {Escape} {Security System Knowledge} {Unarmed combat} / Specific styles {Knife Fighting} {Persuasion} {Acting} {Bribery} {Threaten} That''s a fuckton of pain. If all those skills exist. And that just gives me a chance to avoid, fight, talk my way out of trouble not a guarantee. After punishing my brain to organize all that it was time to get up and face the day. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ First was browsing a few more keywords at the Library to see which sections to check first. Of the list I was sure I could find books on {Running}, {Jumping}, {Climbing}, {Acting}, and some {Unarmed combat} / Specific styles. Surprisingly there was a book on Ninja Knife Fighting that had decent reviews when I researched it. Searching {Pick Lock} on Amazon got a bunch of hits so likely some of the others could be found. But there was no point in ordering books if the whole skill book thing didn''t work. Next was off to the Library beside City Hall. I quickly found the sports section with books on running, jumping and things like mountain climbing. When I lifted my hand to grab the biggest running book my palm started tingling. It kind of felt like when my college hot plate started shorting a bit into my Kraft dinner as I stirred it. I thought back then it was just cold in the kitchen the first couple times. I slowly swept my hand about an inch from the spines of books as I walked down the shelf. The tingle was sharp enough that I could easily tell which book it was detecting even if they were very thin. I started taking pics of the names and codes of each one and checked three entire shelves dealing with sports and physical activities. Of that there were 17 books that reacted. 3 on Running, 2 on Climbing, 1 Jumping, 2 on Hockey, 1 on Football and Soccer each, 1 on Knife Fighting, and 6 on various martial arts. The first three skills I should be able to learn by myself if need be. The sports didn''t interest me, I wasn''t about to try out for the NFL or CFL. The 6 martial arts were all ones taught at dojo''s in town so in theory they weren''t as important. Though learning there would be slow due to limited class times. That left the knife fighting. I tentatively reached out and pulled it from the shelf. Nothing happened other than the tingle stopped as soon as I picked it up. From there I had two choices. Check it out and try to figure out how to work it at home. Which risked the book being absorbed and my broke self owning the library. Or finding a quiet table upstairs and hoping that gaining a skill from it wouldn''t release a flash of light or something. I decided to head upstairs and see if there was any decent spots to try learning it. There were four tables set between different sets of stacks. Two of them were occupied, another was in clear view of the stairs, so that left the one I sat at. I opened the book and started reading. Nothing happened. I reached page 75 of the 100 some heavily illustrated pages. You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author. Nothing happened. I reached the end of the book. Nothing happened. I did learn a few things but no new skill. Which lead back to my occasional thoughts the last few days on just how did I gain the skills. I know with {Walking} I was just zoned out. {Sense Bloodlust} I was thinking about something else entirely and it didn''t feel like I was the one who caused that skill even. And with {Russian} I don''t think I was even paying that close attention to the critical subtitles, I just noticed it in passing while trying to follow the action. All of which left me with no one surefire method. So experimenting I decided to close my eyes and try different things like I did with my failed title viewing exercise. I first tried to mentally review and picture some of the book. My memory is poor but the book was fresh and a few things were especially vivid. Nothing. Next I tried to let my mind drift or at least think about trivial things like ice cream. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I was drooling on the table when I woke up. The clock on the wall showed it was 4:16 through the transparent window, a good thirty minutes after the last I remembered seeing.
Due to your actions you have gained a Skill. The skill {Knife Fighting} (Novice, Passive) EXP: 0.0%, has been created.
The pain of learning the first three skills felt like a giant hammer hitting my head. This was far worse, more like two guys with sledgehammers alternately trying to pound of railway spike of knowledge into my brain. The pain was at least 30% worse and I ended up with just 0.0% in the skill. The thought I could learn skills from books in emergencies was still a bit reassuring as I dragged my sorry brain and tired body home. A quick granola bar and I slept. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Waking up I quickly resolved to save the skillbooks for last and try to pick up what I could naturally. The pain was mostly gone but it was already 9pm. After taking the dog for a short walk and grabbing another granola bar I decided to learn another skill. This time I decided to try learning {Sneak} or {Quiet Movement} a few blocks away downtown. I had a growing theory there were multiple ways to learn skills and one of the ways might involve other people. I didn''t know if {Sense Bloodlust} was a skill I gained by unconsciously noticing the husband''s bloodlust the other day. Or if he somehow pushed the skill onto me by his focused attention. Or if it was a skill that required some type of acknowledgement/interaction between us. I had a feeling it was the last and a way to test it. I''d learned a way of rolling my feet to walk silently as a kid but was never good at it and it never seemed to work well even when I thought I was doing it right. But I was 9 so it''s dubious I was doing it close to right. The method was simple, carefully land your foot heel to toe, along the edge if possible, while watching not to step on anything like loose stones. If I slowly strolled down the sidewalks and passed a lot of people standing around chatting I thought I was sure to get that mental reaction of ''wow I didn''t hear him'' from a few of them. Provided I didn''t exaggerate the way I walked and didn''t get close to anyone it would be a good test of the theory. All the while ignoring everyone as best I could just in case there was such a thing as a sixth sense for being looked at. I felt a bit creepy but since I was actively trying to ignore and avoid everyone''s attention the feeling wasn''t very strong. After 45 minutes I got it and the usual headache.
Due to your actions you have gained a Skill. The skill {Sneaking} (Novice, Active) EXP: 3.8%, has been created.
I was definitely getting stronger mentally. The pain was just as strong but I seemed to have a higher tolerance now. I practice trying to activate it as I walked home. By leaving the Skills Window open I could see when I activated it and the skill started rising. It wasn''t very hard to activate, all I had to do was vaguely think of wanting to sneak or be quiet and it activated. There was also a kind of vague feedback feeling that told me it was on. But it was really hard to notice without concentrating. I kind of wish there was a customizable UI for all this. Got home, had supper, and slept a few hours to recover before my final test of a long day. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ My headache wasn''t over by a long shot this time when I woke at 1am but I though I could learn one new skill if I was careful not to level up another or gain two new skills by accident. I checked sneak and it was under 40% still. Walking had barely risen all day, likely due to the lack of challenge in my route. This time I grabbed a black pair of pants, brushed off the dust, and put on a black jacket, and grabbed a flashlight before going out. The target this time was the Legion park a few blocks away. It wasn''t big, you could throw a baseball but not a football from one side to another. Along the edges, near the sidewalks, were widely spread out trees. Other than the statue at the center, and one row of small trees near it, there was little cover and it was fairly safe and open. I decided I would sit in the shadow of one of the trees that went into the park away from the streetlight. I checked with my flashlight for dog poop, picked my spot around 20 feet from a sidewalk and just let myself peacefully wait out the present headache. I was easily visible to anyone within 20 to 30 feet so I shouldn''t startle anyone unless they were only watching their feet. Beyond that I should be hidden a bit, I was hoping that enough people would pass me on their way back from the bars that I would get some type of hiding skill by them not noticing me until they came closer. It was damn boring. The road being ripped up, for sewer and water maintenance, along one side of the park lowered the number of walkers more than I expected. I did get what I guess I can call company when one of the drunk college students staggered into the park and decided to lie down for a while. He wasn''t good at the whole resting and recovering, instead rolling around like my dog and breaking into 3 word song sections. Finally a bit after the bars closed at 3am I got it.
Due to your actions you have gained a Skill. The skill {Hiding} (Novice, Active) EXP: 7.4%, has been created.
I went home, headed to the pain pills then bed while I reviewed my final results.
{Hiding} (Novice, Active) EXP: 8.7%. {Knife Fighting} (Novice, Passive) EXP: 0.0%. {Russian} (Novice, Passive) EXP: 0.1%. {Sense Bloodlust} (Intermediate, Passive) EXP: 25.1% {Sneaking} (Novice, Active) EXP: 36.5% {Walking} (Advanced, Passive) EXP: 19.3%.
6) Hey you creepy bastard in the doorway, got any smokes? Friday, September 4th, 2015 I woke with a headache yet again. It was a bit more serious than some but still not the worst morning lately. I made a vow, while the dog whined at me to go out. I was going to arrange things so that I woke pain free tomorrow for the first time in a week. Taking the dog out was when I first felt strange. I normally took her out a few minutes after waking up and harass her into remembering that she desperately wanted to pee a few minutes before as she wandered the yard. Today though I was distracted by strange micro breezes. Usually the wind comes off the lake, or from the north, but this time it felt like I was pushed from multiple directions. I was trying to figure it out still when the dog ran up the steps to go inside. For some reason the knife like pressure of {Sense Bloodlust} came to mind but this feeling wasn''t as sharply defined or painful as that. After making breakfast I started catching up on some reading of my favorite stories. A bit of reading about Kumoko-chan reminded me there were thoughts I had put off. So far I had been concentrating on skills since I knew they existed. I knew titles existed but with only 1 title my title window was too useless to consider. And I knew at least one stat existed since it was mentioned in a window. So far all the skills I had seen or posited were ones that codified normal human abilities. As in I could walk or run more efficiently without paying attention. I''d guessed that if there was a running skill then at a high level of {Running} I would reach whatever limits my body set. And if I raised my stats then I might reach near Ironman or even Olympic endurance or speeds despite my age. Reading about Kumoko-chan getting fire resistance made me wonder if maybe deep down I lacked imagination or trust in the windows. I was fairly sure the whole thing existed and wasn''t a delusion. But I lacked the faith to try something like drinking mild poisons to see if something like {Poison Resistance} existed. Another example was not wanting to try hitting my hand with a hammer until I maybe gained something like {Blunt Resistance}. I sat and wrote down a list of a few questions before I had to jump in the shower and rush to my afternoon shift. I knew I didn''t have even a partial list but it''s all I could brainstorm in a few minutes. So far there was a window for Skills, Titles, and likely Stats. What other windows were there? Skills seemed to raise quickly to match the best I could do already, then raise slowly as I improved past that. What were the higher ranks of the skills and what was the limit of how far I could improve? I had raised one stat for sure. Have I been raising other stats? Is there a strength stat that I could raise if I worked out at the club? Would raising multiple stats open a stat window like two skills did? Did resistances exist? What type? Sticking a fork into a socket was not a practical way to test if electrical resistance exists. Same with testing fire resistance with a lighter. So how do I test one? Is there superhuman or paranormal abilities in this system? Like an inventory window or magic? And how the hell would I find them since so far there was no hints. Is there some kind of healing ability I could easily get? I really didn''t want to poke myself with a knife multiple times to find out that there''s no such thing as fast or super healing. Pondering all those questions in the shower I was running late for work as I scurried out the door. I was so focused on the questions that I was already halfway to work when I realized the strange breeze feeling was stronger and there was something more. As I focused on it I noticed immediately that there was no actual breeze. My clothing, hair, even the grass around me wasn''t affected. Looking around for the source was disconcerting. As my eyes passed over the businesses and street I felt like I could almost see high and low points in the pressure. It was almost like a 3D version of where they mark low pressure zones in a TV weather report. But there was nothing I could see, just a feeling as I looked at a point. It only took a minute of comparing the feelings to see that the low points were between buildings and the high points were in the middle of the street. The limits of how far I could feel was maybe 50 feet. The pressure seemed to dipped a bit when I looked up above the street but it was hard to tell if I was imagining it or not. After a quick glance to see if anyone was near I said "Skills Window".
{Hiding} (Novice, Active) EXP: 16.2%. {Knife Fighting} (Novice, Passive) EXP: 0.0%. {Russian} (Novice, Passive) EXP: 0.1%. {Sense Bloodlust} (Intermediate, Passive) EXP: 27.3% {Sneaking} (Novice, Active) EXP: 36.5% {Walking} (Advanced, Passive) EXP: 19.6%.
{Walking} was barely higher which confirmed yet again that I needed tougher terrain or maybe Power walking to raise it. But Hiding had went up noticeably and was still slowly going up as I walked out in the open. I''ll ignore how I was pissing people off just by walking down the street and thereby raising {Sense Bloodlust}. Fuck''em. As an experiment I stepped into one of the slightly lower areas which was parking lot beside a Chinese restaurant. The parking lot ended with a large boulder and partial fence, beyond that was another parking lot for the business on the other side of the block. I could cut through from one side of the block to the other just by passing through the two parking lots. The {Hiding} still kept rising slowly, it was hard to tell if it was faster or slower. The lowest point I could feel as I looked around was near the back of the building on the other side of the parking lot. I wasn''t terribly well hidden as I walked over. While I was pretty much impossible to spot from passing cars I was in the open to anyone walking on the other side of the block. The {Hiding} skill was clearly rising faster now. It was already past 20% and still going. It seemed obvious that one of the side benefits of {Hiding} was being able to feel where to stand to be not be spotted. The obvious question was, was it just using my vision to figure out where fewer people could see. Or was it actually sensing how many people could see that spot. I was definitely going to be a few minutes late for work if I didn''t hurry so I quickly left the parking lot and picked up the pace. I got there just barely on time and decided to work on sneak and practice sensing low pressure areas occasionally during the shift. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Nothing special happened at work or the walk home other than several skills rising a bit. The only thing that stood out was that {Hiding} didn''t raise at all when I was alone in the staff office and the slop room. Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon. At home I decided to put aside the list of questions on my desk and do some searches again. It had been a bit and I still didn''t know if anyone else had gotten this system of windows when I did. Browsing YouTube for a bit quickly produced unexpected results. A flying girl... A seriously fucking flying girl wearing jeans and a pink hoodie, with ski goggles holding it to her head, was flying above Tulsa being chased by a news helicopter. The top of the hoodie slipped back to the goggle band and showed blonde hair. She wasn''t fast, but she was agile. Every time the helicopter got close to being on top of her she would flip midair and double back. At one point she was almost pacing a car for a half a minute so was likely doing 20-30 miles per hour. Searching news sites gave hits on several of them. Apparently the girl was spotted by a local TV station on Thursday morning but it took a while for national media took attention since it seemed an obvious hoax or publicity stunt. After reporters flooded the area they found that a few residents had seen a late teenage girl flying on Wednesday too but no one was fast enough to take a pic and without that didn''t want to speak up. Searching for more information over the next few hours led nowhere but left me short on time so I made some no-name KD before heading back for my evening shift. The cleaning shift went smooth at first. I wasn''t sure if I was happy I hadn''t gained a {Vacuuming} skill so far or sad. It would likely make work easier and faster but it''s the kind of skill you''d want to delete off your character in a game before showing any of your friends your skills. Around midnight I had a level up of sneak with the usual pain, and then a bit of a surprise.
Through use of the skill {Sneaking} it has reached Beginner level. {Sneaking} (Beginner, Passive) EXP: 3.7%.
As the pain of the stabilized and the window faded a new window appeared.
You have reached 20 Mental Stamina. A bonus of +1 has been applied to your Willpower. You can now see a stat.
My headache kicked up a small notch after the second window appeared. I could now see a stat? Why ''a'' stat? A quick glance around for people showed none. "Status Window." Nothing showed. "Stat Window." Still no result. A thought occurred that despite it only saying one stat that it might be pluralized. "Stats Window."
Mental Stamina: 16/20
The window was a bit strange in that I couldn''t see anything else, not even the Willpower mentioned in the previous window. But seeing 16/20 gave the obvious question, was 4 Mental Stamina used in the level up of sneak? I''d been pretty sure that some was used up, but this seemed to confirm it. The next question was, did level up take 0, 1, 2, 3 or the full 4 points? Since I didn''t know how many I had just before the level up. Did I have 19 and 3 points were taken off before the max was bumped to 20? Did I have 18 and 2 points were taken off? 17 and 1? Or did I have 16 and the pain was from Mental Stamina''s max going up? The only way to check was to level up something else and watch just before and after. So with {Sneaking} having just risen the easiest was raising {Hiding} to Beginner. It was at 56.8% of Novice and Novice skills seemed to go fast if you worked on them. First thing though was finishing work. I just had the showers and sauna to spray down so that was fairly quick. Except the tempting idea that occurred. Some games have a simple heat resistance, not fire resistance. If I turned on the sauna and stood inside for a while, would I get my first resistance? After thinking about it for a bit two things were stopping me. I really wanted to know the answer to the Mental Stamina questions but if I gaining a resistance gave a massive headache I''d possibly break my plan of waking up pain free. And I had no towel so if I was in there for too long I''d be a hot mess, in the wrong sense, and couldn''t take a shower. So I put off the heat resistance question for Saturday''s shift. The gym was almost empty as I finished so raising {Hiding} there didn''t seem useful, unless I wanted to annoy my coworkers drifting in and out of their sight doing but fluttering around. Thinking about it for a bit I decided to head near a few bars downtown. If I stayed in sight of the biggest one and tested various shadows I figured I should get {Hiding} to go up fast. The plan went fairly smooth except for one obnoxiously drunk 16 year old kid who kept asking me for smokes. I was actually able to raise hiding by just keeping behind him as he looked around for me since he was so confused and unfocused he kept forgetting me and then remembering he wanted smokes from me. At 97.8% {Hiding} I checked Mental Stamina.
Mental Stamina: 16/20
It was still 16 out of 20. A couple minutes later of dodging behind the drunk and using the shadows to hide from two cars I finally got the pain and window.
Through use of the skill {Hiding} it has reached Beginner level. {Hiding} (Beginner, Passive) EXP: 0.5%.
Didn''t give a damn the drunk was there and said, "Stats Window".
Mental Stamina: 13/21
So, each level up and possibly new skill seemed to give 1 more Mental Stamina to my max. And I had likely lost 3 points. With that clarified I decided to head home and browse a bit. After finding nothing new on flying girl despite an hour searching Tulsa related websites I went to bed early. Checking before I drifted off gave:
{Hiding} (Beginner, Active) EXP: 4.4%. {Knife Fighting} (Novice, Passive) EXP: 0.0%. {Russian} (Novice, Passive) EXP: 0.1%. {Sense Bloodlust} (Intermediate, Passive) EXP: 30.1% {Sneaking} (Beginner, Active) EXP: 17.2% {Walking} (Advanced, Passive) EXP: 23.4%.
7) Screw you resistances! Saturday, September 5th, 2015 How the fuck do you get a skill for flying? Woke up with no headache, which was glorious. And then that thought filled my head. I had suppressed it the day before with work and raising skills. But now I was left to wonder how could someone get a {Flying} skill in just a few days. There were a couple obvious possibilities like they didn''t get their skill system on the same day and might have had it for years and just randomly showed it off now. Or that their ability different dramatically from mine. But thinking about it and wondering how I could create a skill to fly was maddening. Fly with a hang glider or ultralight and then all of a sudden be able to fly? Tie a few thousand birthday balloons onto myself until I floated? It was enough to almost give me a headache so I wrestled with crazy dog for a bit then started the day. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Started catching up to the days translations and new fictions while trying not to faceplanet Kerbals in the other window. After successfully catching up and not dying in the other window I was on to the news. Looking for super flying blondie found nothing new. I was thinking good, or I might be a bit bitter, when I found something more amazing. On Tuesday in Spain, in Malaga to be exact, there was a bank robbery. It had made the news at the time but no real details were released by the police. Until a early morning Saturday their time an anonymous source released the bank''s security footage to a CNN affiliate. The footage was up on the CNN website and across the internet soon after. It showed a roughly 6 foot tall man walking through an external wall of the building, through the interior wall the safe was built into. The man stepped inside the safe where he was picked up reaching into locked safety deposit boxes at seemingly random until he had filled his backpack. After only a few minutes of looting he turned, walked out through the walls and was gone outside the building. There was no apparent damage to the walls on the not exactly high res camera footage, and definitely no holes. All I could do was sit and stare at the footage on my computer. That seemed even more impossible for a skill than flying. How would you train that? Gain the skill by walking through air, a gas, skill it up walking underwater, a liquid, then what walk through a solid like tissue paper and somehow you''d be ready to walk through a sheet of plywood? All I could do was sit there thinking for even longer before saying, "Seriously, what the fuck?". I sat there browsing until my cell alarm reminded me work was soon. Barely remembering my plan I grabbed a few granola bars, a workout outfit, a towel, and a water bottle, and then headed to work. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I almost unconsciously worked on {Sneaking} and {Hiding} when it wouldn''t be too obvious but my mind was still on the flying and bank robbery videos for most of the shift. It wasn''t until I was nearly done that I gathered myself together enough to plan. The goal tonight was first to add the skill {Running} to my skills list since I was nearly 100% sure it would work. Second was to level it to at least Beginner level right away, maybe Advanced if my out of shape body allowed. I''d figured I would have to take several breaks to recover between runs. The third goal was to try and gain some notification about heat resistance, or a skill, or something, using the sauna. I finished around 10:30pm and changed to get ready for the first run. I stopped by the dry sauna to set it to 90 Celsius and 60 minutes to let it warm up. I then picked a treadmill that my {Hiding} skill said was least in view of people since I had a premonition. Happily a computer monitor blocked the front desk staff''s view of me as I warmed up with a slow walk. Slowly picked up the pace to 5mph which was a fairly moderate jog. Even then I was struggling after a bit but concentrating on my breathing and foot placement kept me going. Unfortunately I barely made a mile on the first run before needing a bit of a break. Second run was 15 minutes later which I spent walking around the club keeping warmed up. I had my breathing down from the start, and decent enough technique. I checked my Mental Stamina, and it was 21/21. About 17 minutes into the run the pain hit. Unfortunately my unspoken premonition was right and I went set my foot down wrong as the hammer blow hit. Down I went onto the treadmill. Off I went to behind the treadmill as the window popped up.
Due to your actions you have gained a Skill. The skill {Running} (Novice, Passive) EXP: 6.5%, has been created.
One of the more embarrassing things to do in the gym. I ended up with startling the front desk guy with a loud boom. And ended with a slightly sore face, and a bruise on my leg from hitting the machine behind me. I turned off the treadmill, explained I''d lost concentration due to a clip on the news channel playing in the treadmill''s built in TV. It wasn''t the first time either of us had seen people too distracted by the TV''s to workout properly, or at all, so he seemed to buy it. When he went back to the desk I checked my Mental Stamina.
Mental Stamina: 11/22
Which answered a question I''d had the other day. When I was testing {Walking} in the woods it felt like the level up pain was half or a third of a new skills. It actually turned out to be just under a third. Another proof that I can''t properly compare different pains. In theory I could now upgrade {Running} 3 more times at 9 Mental Stamina total, leaving me 2 MS left to get home. Provided I didn''t activate {Sneaking} or {Hiding} since leveling them would likely leave me passed out on a sidewalk or worse. And providing that going from a Beginner skill to Intermediate was still only 3 points. I still didn''t know if gaining resistances drained my Mental Stamina either. This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author''s work. So many freaking questions. I decided to head to the sauna first. It shouldn''t be more than 10 points in the worst case so I would still be able to drag myself from the club to home with my 1 Mental Stamina if careful. Left my workout outfit on since it was fairly light and opened the door. No one was there but damn it smelled. It had been cleaned by a coworker around 4 or 5 but clearly a few very sweaty people passed through. With a small ''Muahaha'' I went to the slop room, grabbed some deodorant, and sprayed a bit into the sauna from outside the door. I didn''t want to get a lot of superheated deodorant or sweat in my lungs so I let it dissipate while I filled my water bottle with warm water. I left the bottle in a locker in the change room and went into the sauna again. One of the benefits of a dry sauna is that they are warmer since you can sweat easier in them than wet saunas. The higher heat lets your heart rate go up and it can burn up to half the calories of a light jog in theory. So my less fat than a week ago body burned a bit more calories as I waited. Occasionally checking the clock outside through the sauna window gave me a rough idea of the time. I planned to be in no more than 20 minutes at a time with breaks to rehydrate and cool off a bit between. Ruining my health just to get a possibly useless resistance wasn''t in my plans. About 15 minutes in the pain hit. For the first time it wasn''t entirely in my head. I felt like every inch of skin was burning, and every bone in my body ached, from my skull down to my little toes. My vision grayed out as I tried to get up but my body wouldn''t move. After at least 20 seconds of pain my vision started to come back and I could shakily move my arms. A window popped in front of my eyes as I tried to get up from the bench.
Due to your actions you have gained a Resistance. Heat Resistance has reached 11.
My muscles were twitching and hard to control as I pushed open the door and staggered out to the change room benches. I didn''t bother trying to close it or turn the sauna off. Grabbing my bottle I spilled a bit trying to take a drink. "Stats Window".
Mental Stamina: 11/22
Apparently Resistances didn''t need Mental Stamina. I don''t know what stat they drew on but it was painful in an entirely new way. I was now hurting body and mind. I was clearly done for the night so I grabbed my towel and hit the showers. I was a bit hesitant to turn the heat up considering the burning sensation was still on my skin. But heat can be good for muscle soreness and they were sore. The effect of Heat Resistance was apparent immediately. I found myself slowly turning the dial farther and farther into the hot water section only to still feel comfortable. I had to stop before it reached the end of the dial but the higher temperature were far more bearable than it would have been the day before. I managed to get mostly cleaned up before the apocalypse of pain came. My body seized up as I lost consciousness standing in the shower. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The feeling of the water hitting me was the first thing I felt as I woke up. My head ached. My body ached and a window was blocking my vision.
Due to your actions you have gained a Skill. The skill {Pain Tolerance} (Novice, Passive) EXP: 9.2%, has been created.
After I read it the window slowly faded only for another window to pop up.
Due to your actions you have gained a Resistance. Pain Resistance has reached 5%. Due to unlocking two resistances you have unlocked the Resistance window.
Staggering out of the shower I checked the clock. It was after 4am, almost 5 hours after I started the shower. I was so dazed I hadn''t even noticed how waterlogged my skin was. I thought of opening my resistance window to see it but I knew I''d just end up punching the air trying to hit it. Drying off, I got dressed, staggered past the night guy with barely a word, tottered home, let the dog run wild on the front lawn and crashed. Another day that didn''t go as planned to say the least. I did end up checking all my windows just before bed. Even the useless title window. "Skills Window"
{Hiding} (Beginner, Active) EXP: 43.9%. {Knife Fighting} (Novice, Passive) EXP: 0.0%. {Pain Tolerance} (Novice, Passive) EXP: 21.3%. {Running} (Novice, Passive) EXP: 6.5%. {Russian} (Novice, Passive) EXP: 0.1%. {Sense Bloodlust} (Intermediate, Passive) EXP: 32.0%. {Sneaking} (Beginner, Active) EXP: 36.7%. {Walking} (Advanced, Passive) EXP: 25.1%.
"Resistances Window"
Physical Heat: 11 Pain: 5%
"Stats Window"
Mental Stamina: 1/23
"Titles Window"
Slightly Masochistic: 5% Pain into Pleasure when equipped
----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Author''s note: Tables will change a bit as I learn how to do them a bit better. 8) I didnt want those superhuman powers anyway. Sunday, September 6th, 2015 I woke up still in some pain around 1pm. Since the dog was kind enough to let me sleep in I paid it back by striking first. Finger pokes from under the comforter let her gnaw on my fingers to her hearts content, without slobbering on them, while I worked out a plan for the day. The {Pain Tolerance} skill and Pain resistance were the first question. There was still no help function no matter how I phrased things but after considering how the other issue happened I was able to figure a bit out. The other issue was what exactly happened to my body Saturday night. If I thought of the paralysis and pain as my body being rebuilt with Heat resistance added to it then Pain resistance would be my body being rebuilt to either transmit less pain to my brain or somehow dampen it a bit if it was too strong. And {Pain Tolerance} would be a mental ability skill. Presumably the ability to do ignore pain a bit and keep going. Which for the first time pointed out something. That all the Skills were actually mental abilities not physical ones. I hadn''t thought of it before because things like {Walking} had to be physical right? But when I thought of what {Walking} seemed to do, it was mainly my brain controlling how I walk better. I wasn''t able to magically walk up walls or blink forward each step. Or at least not so far. Instead the skill let my mind make each and every step be more perfect than I likely would do without intense concentration. Which led to the idea that the limit of {Walking}, {Running}, {Sneaking}, and similar skills was based on my perception of my environment and physical fitness. Since {Walking} was my highest skill I thought about raising that and working on a few others. But twenty-three Mental Stamina gave me a few possibilities without counting a rest period to refresh it. One option would be to create two new skills using up twenty Mental Stamina, leaving me three as a poor buffer. Since if I accidentally leveled something I''d be left with zero while lying on the ground somewhere. The second option was to level up a mix of things seven times leaving two points. Or level six and leave five for safety. The final option was to create one new skill and level other skills four times, three if being cautious. I decided upon a plan, got up and took the dog for an unusual pre-breakfast walk in the nice weather. She usually got a walk when I was heating up the stove for supper but since I wouldn''t be back until late that wasn''t an option. After breakfast, a shower and other routine stuff I found an old backpack in a closet. Wiped off the dust, then tossed two boxes of granola bars and a water bottle in. I decided to ignore the news for now. If I saw someone had the ability to teleport I''d spend the day bashing my head against rocks to try and forget. With that pessimistic thought I left home and started the 45 minute walk to the college trails up top the escarpment north and a bit west of the city. I took the easier west road up instead of the north highway. The trails went for miles and were rated at different difficulty levels. The levels were easy, moderate and very difficult. For some reason no ''difficult'' level trail was marked, only ''very difficult''. Going from the campus at the east side, they formed a mesh with the far west end anchored on a small creek and waterfall. While couldn''t really be easily summarized like that, most of the west trails were moderate, the east easy. The very difficult trail was a decent length trail in the middle. {Walking} had reached Advanced 28.4% by the time I reached the campus at the top of the hill. Finding the entrance to the trails was easy from there. I had decided to spend at least an hour or two testing how {Walking} responded to the easy and moderate trails. On the easy trails it was increasing about 1% every 15 minutes, which meant around 10 hours of walking the easy trails if that stayed constant before it reached 100%. It was hard to accurately judge though, since it could even the easy trail varied a bit. The moderate trails were a lot more helpful to skill grinding. The tougher footing and elevation changes meant I paid more attention to walking. The result was averaging around 2.5% every 15 minutes. {Walking} had reached 36.7% by the time I''d made those rough estimates and it was after 4pm. With over 60% to go that would have meant 6 hours of walking the moderate trails, lasting well after nightfall. Darkness might help the skills go up faster, or it might not, but snapping an ankle a mile or more from help would not be good. So instead I headed to top of the very difficult section. It featured a lot of rock drops, roots above ground, and steep slopes in spots. If the trail was wet it could have been a nightmare. It wasn''t very long but as soon as I reached the bottom I turned and headed back up which was considerably harder. Walking back and forth on one small trail was boring except that the difficulty of the trail meant it needed all of my attention. Whenever my mind wandered a bit too much I took a short granola bar break at the nearest rock outcropping. The skill grinding for doing the trail was good though. It was at least 6-7% per 15 minutes on the downslope and 5% in the uphill direction. Walking uphill was more tiring but much easier to see where to place your feet. It was getting fairly dark and closing in on 8pm when the skill up smacked my brain finally.
Through use of the skill {Walking} it has reached Master level. {Walking} (Master, Passive) EXP: 0.2%.
"Stats Window"
Mental Stamina: 20/24
After recovering mid trail I still had to walk to the end and move through the easier trails to get out of the trail system. Watching the {Walking} skill it moved less than .4% during the 5 minutes it took to least the very difficult trail onto the moderate trail. That was a quarter, or maybe every worse, what it was before the skill level up. You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story. The rest of the trails would clearly be useless to train {Walking} so I switched to training {Running} as I headed back to the campus. The skill was still at Novice which almost anything raised quickly. Running the moderate and easy trail sections quickly raised it.
Through use of the skill {Running} it has reached Beginner level. {Running} (Beginner, Passive) EXP: 0.7%.
That left me with 17/25 Mental Stamina and a mounting headache. Even though a middle aged guy looked a bit weird running along the wooded edge of the campus I did it anyway. I alternated walking and running as I passed through it and headed east along the road to the north highway. The north highway was my final skill stop before heading home. The start of the highway was a climb up 300 feet through a long rock cut. There was no sidewalk along the highway but interestingly at the bottom was a rogue transport capture system. If a transport lost its breaks going down the hill it could slow in that lane. The rock cut was the interesting part. Ignoring all the spikes of bloodlust and occasional honks from drivers I slowly started navigating along it. The goal wasn''t to climb up it since I didn''t want to drop 20 or more feet onto the paved edge of the highway. Instead I tried to move sideways and was rewarded with only a 3 foot drop onto my ass when the pain hit after 25 minutes.
Due to your actions you have gained a Skill. The skill {Climbing} (Novice, Passive) EXP: 2.3%, has been created.
"Stats Window"
Mental Stamina: 7/26
Deciding to grind the {Climbing} skill while I was at a good spot I spent almost an hour moving up and down both sides of the highway. At first I had repeated the sections I first did, but that didn''t seem to raise it as fast as new untouched areas of the rock cut. I hadn''t really noticed that happening on the trail but I''d been pretty concentrated on footing. A second thing I noticed was when the level up pain came.
Through use of the skill {Climbing} it has reached Beginner level. {Climbing} (Beginner, Passive) EXP: 1.3%.
When the {Climbing} skill was created I lost my grip and fell on my ass. Partly I lost my grip from the pain, and partly from surprise since I didn''t know what exact moment it would be created. However when the skill leveled up to Beginner I didn''t come close to losing my grip. I knew it was coming and the pain was less to be sure. However I noticed my hands and feet automatically adjusted during the shock. Which reminded me that I''d lost my footing on the treadmill when {Running} was created but even on the moderately rough trails I didn''t stumble slightly when {Running} leveled. The skill itself seemed to save me even if I didn''t notice at the time. After that revelation I was down to 4 out of 27 Mental Stamina, it was after 10pm, so I headed home at a walk. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ After I got home I started supper, took the dog out, finished supper, ate, and started browsing the news channels. Without searching too deeply it I saw three interesting things. The first two were new people with superhuman powers. One was a faith healer in Boca Raton who was even able to heal people with gun shot wounds, though his ability didn''t work on himself. The other was a retired doctor who was suddenly able to alter her body part into different shapes. She was able to make her arms into legs, her neck 2 feet long and able to look behind easily, and other tricks. The third was the most interesting since it caused an idea to click in my head. Scientists had identified a new variety of deep sea fish. Which reminded me I hadn''t tried to gain any kind of identify, or analyze type skill yet. The word identify seemed simpler than analyze. With analyze you had to figure things out about something. Whereas identify was more about memorization and checklists. What type of leaves does the tree have, what color is the bark? I wasn''t sure either skill exists but it was worth testing identify by memorizing varieties of plants and trees and going for a walk in the nearby woods sometime. By the time I''d finished all that it was 3am. Which didn''t leave much energy for the one problem that nagged me during the day. Which was my lack of physical fitness. During the walking, running and even climbing my lack of endurance and strength had shown up. Being strong enough to lift 120lb dumbbells and put them back on the rack at work didn''t help pull myself up a cliff. I decided to do some moderate weight, high rep, full body workouts to build some strength and a lot of muscle endurance over the next week. I still had no clue what stats existed other than Mental Stamina and Willpower, but some kind of strength and endurance stats seemed a safe bet. Heading to bed I checked my skills just before letting the dog snuggle up and falling asleep. "Skills Window"
{Climbing} (Beginner, Passive) EXP: 4.9%. {Hiding} (Beginner, Active) EXP: 43.9%. {Knife Fighting} (Novice, Passive) EXP: 0.0%. {Pain Tolerance} (Novice, Passive) EXP: 28.6%. {Running} (Beginner, Passive) EXP: 7.7%. {Russian} (Novice, Passive) EXP: 0.1%. {Sense Bloodlust} (Intermediate, Passive) EXP: 37.5%. {Sneaking} (Beginner, Active) EXP: 38.3%. {Walking} (Master, Passive) EXP: 2.8%.
9) I need to get stronger, or else. Monday, September 7th, 2015 I didn''t work Mondays, so it being a holiday didn''t affect things much, but I decided to relax a bit after how busy Sunday was. First I took the dog out only to watch as the dog tried to clean the driveway of dust and twigs by rolling around on it. After getting her to stay still and bask in the sun I was able to brush off the worst of it. Taking her inside I brushed her, gave her a bath, then took a shower myself. Ate breakfast while writing out a more detailed workout plan. Essentially I decided to do light to moderate full body workouts at first and adjust from there. Even though I wasn''t exactly weak for a 46 year old I wasn''t built anywhere near some of the heavy lifters my age at the gym. Endurance seemed to be more important though at first, so doing a lot of exercises would build endurance first and some strength. Heading off to the gym I noticed that while testing {Sneaking} it didn''t decrease my speed at all. Leveling up {Walking} had improved how much unconscious control I had on how my feet landed that it improved everything. {Sneaking} wasn''t leveling up very fast though, likely partially due to how easy it was to walk quietly on concrete versus leaves or something more prone to create noise. After a few minutes I was at the gym and ready to begin working out. I choose to do the upstairs weight circuit. There were two circuits that hit all major muscle groups. One downstairs with air pressure machines, one upstairs with normal weight stacks. Both were roughly equal in how they hit all major muscles and were equally weak on hitting the secondary stabilizer muscles. The upstairs machines were out of view of most of my coworkers so there would be less poking at the old guy working out by the 20 year olds. The circuit went well at first. Estimating a correct weight setting, doing a set, then moving to the next. With no pause between sets other than setup I started to go through the circuit three times. On the second set I suddenly felt a bit tired and sore all over. The individual muscle pain hadn''t been much yet but it disappeared into the general ache. Continuing on the muscles started hurting again as I did the sets but the tiredness and general ache stayed. It wasn''t until I reached near the end of the third set that it happened again. The individual pain in the muscles dropped and the general pain and tiredness increased. The level of pain and tiredness wasn''t close to gaining Heat and Pain Resistance the other night but felt similar. I knew I could take more so I did another circuit and a half until I felt the feeling again. The weird part was that even though I felt tired after each time the weight I was using was increasing. Even though I couldn''t see it I wondered if each wave of pain and tiredness was my strength and endurance going up. That was still impossible to judge since I could only see one stat still. But if one of my other stats than Mental Stamina hit 20 I wonder if I''d be able to see it, or maybe even all them. Five circuits took quite a while so I left to shower at home, take the dog out and make supper before working on the next issue. It was only just before 6pm so there was still lots of time to do a few things after eating. The next issue was preparing for the identify skill. I wasn''t too clear if there was such a thing but since it wasn''t too hard I setup a few windows with different sites about local flowers, ferns, trees and other flora. I browsed them for a while before finding a site that let you do memory drills of how you can tell them apart. It was setup to help biology and ecology students. Testing on how to tell chokeberry trees from apple trees when not in bloom led to the blue doom.
Due to your actions you have gained a Skill. The skill {Memorization} (Novice, Passive) EXP: 3.1%, has been created.
It was nice to have a skill that helped my very poor memory but trying to prepare and memorize things while my body was tired and sore, and my brain was aching was impossible. I decided to take a short nap. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Waking up a bit after 11pm I felt a lot better. The pain and tiredness was mostly gone, and the headache was missing. "Skills Window"
{Climbing} (Beginner, Passive) EXP: 4.9%. {Hiding} (Beginner, Active) EXP: 44.1%. {Knife Fighting} (Novice, Passive) EXP: 0.0%. {Pain Tolerance} (Novice, Passive) EXP: 38.8%. {Memorization} (Novice, Passive) EXP: 3.1%. {Running} (Beginner, Passive) EXP: 7.7%. {Russian} (Novice, Passive) EXP: 0.1%. {Sense Bloodlust} (Intermediate, Passive) EXP: 39.3%. {Sneaking} (Beginner, Active) EXP: 40.2%. {Walking} (Master, Passive) EXP: 3.0%.
About the only reasonable skills to raise at night were {Running}, {Sneaking} and {Hiding}. Trying to raise {Walking} would need terrain that I could snap an ankle on at night. {Russian} and {Knife Fighting} might be useful at some point but starting a knife fight at random didn''t seem wise. So I went for a light run around the neighborhood. Running along the sidewalk wasn''t too hard but was increasing it at a reasonable rate. I planned to try running on some grass at the park at the end to test how much that changed the rate of improvement. But something else intervened. I was in a bit of a zone, not paying much attention to anything but my pace when I suddenly felt a hard knife like stab from {Sense Bloodlust}. The single stab changed into a fierce pain all over the front of my body. A block ahead was what looked like a man standing on the opposite sidewalk. I could strongly feel his hatred stabbing into me like being jabbed all over with needles. I couldn''t quite make out what he looked like standing in the dead zone between streetlights but the build was of a fairly stocky man, roughly my height or taller. He wore dark clothes but it was impossible to tell if they were black or just something like dark blue. It didn''t seem like anyone I knew that disliked me that much. Like a lot of people I knew a few enemies who wouldn''t mind me being run over by a bus but this person didn''t seem familiar. At the same time there was a strange feeling of familiarity or resonance. Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings. Ignoring his build I tried to concentrate on that familiarity but the pain from leveling up {Sense Bloodlust} broke my concentration.
Through use of the skill {Sense Bloodlust} it has reached Advanced level. {Sense Bloodlust} (Advanced, Passive) EXP: 5.1%.
The sheer amount of bloodlust had raised over 50% of the Intermediate skill in moments, something that took hours to do in {Walking}. It was a bit hard to concentrate but I had been getting used to that level of pain. While I watched he seemed to bend down to pick up something. With a flash of intuition I dodged behind a parked car on the street. Peeking over it I saw him wind up and throw something towards me. Moments later car windows shattered about 50 feet ahead on the opposite side of the street. Two cars had been parked on the opposite side of the street under a light. Whatever he threw went entirely through the first car''s window and then pierced the front and back windows of the second car. That was a terrifying level of strength even if his accuracy was on par for a five year old. From a block away he shattered 4 glass windows. I wasn''t even sure if I could throw something through one car window from a few feet away. Activating {Hiding} I moved to the front lawn beside me and tried to move from shadow to shadow towards the person. They clearly were getting glimpses of me due to my low skill but the rocks they threw went wild hitting the houses without coming close. I was slowly closing in as the entire block woke up and lights were coming on. We were only five blocks from the police station and maybe eight from the downtown patrols so I knew there would be a quick response as soon as someone had time to explain it to the 911 operators. The thrower must have realized too that he wasn''t getting anywhere. By the time I reached a half block away he had turned and started running. It was simply the weirdest running I had ever seen. It was more like watching the old moon landings than anything else I could explain with. Each running step took him four feet into the air and a good thirty feet forward. I dropped {Hiding} and tried to chase after but it was no use. He was much faster and soon was around a corner. I was still getting stabs from {Sense Bloodlust} for a bit after I lost sight of him but shortly that faded until the pains were gone. Not wanting to be there when the police came I started {Running} again towards the park. If I could get far enough away I could pretend I was innocently jogging or using {Hiding} disappear in the park''s shadows. I was near the park when I first heard racing engines. Slowing to a walk I kept on going as a cop car turned onto the street I was on with its lights flashing. It slowed a bit but didn''t stop as it passed me on its way to the damaged cars and houses. I decided to level up both {Running} and {Hiding} before bed. It was after midnight but {Hiding} was at 74.8% and {Running} at 53.7%. Actively using {Hiding} while running between cover while someone was aggressively looking had raised it fast. I alternated with {Walking} whenever my breathing was too heavy and continued on until past 3am. My mind was working on all types of theories on who the stone thrower was, why he seemed familiar and what that strange running technique was, as I practiced the skills. By the time I finished raising my skills, over three hours later, I had a theory. The person had some type power of super strength and that''s why I had the feeling of familiarity or resonance from him. I didn''t know if he had any other power but it made the most sense from what I''ve seen. Most of the people showing up in the news seemed to have one power. When I got home I tried searching the local news for anyone with super strength only to come up empty. Searching international news came up with three more people with super abilities. First was a 25 year old runner who was able to hit a bit over 13m/s(a bit over 30mph) for 400 meters. That was faster than anyone had been clocked even for a few steps and 30% faster than the world record 100 meter sprint much less 400 meters. Second was a firefighter who found he could control fires. His power was slowly growing and could put out fires within a few feet of himself if they weren''t burning at too high a temperature. The third was tragic and a reminder of two things. One that everyone who had a power might not know, and secondly that those people with powers might not be friendly. The third person was a suicide bomber in Afghanistan. He had walked into a local market in Baghlan and using a suicide vest blew himself up killing 9 people and injuring over 30. But the story didn''t end there. While seemingly dazed he stood there and repeatedly exploded every minute. Most survivors were too far away to be hurt by the smaller repeated explosions though. A shopkeeper caught it on his phone about 10 minutes after the first explosion. Shortly after taping three explosions a police team repeatedly shot the bomber until he fell dead. The world wasn''t getting less dangerous even if people could heal others and put out fires. I needed to become stronger if I was going to be safe. I checked my skills and stats windows one last time before falling asleep. "Skills Window"
{Climbing} (Beginner, Passive) EXP: 4.9%. {Hiding} (Intermediate, Active) EXP: 8.6%. {Knife Fighting} (Novice, Passive) EXP: 0.0%. {Memorization} (Novice, Passive) EXP: 3.5%. {Pain Tolerance} (Novice, Passive) EXP: 40.1%. {Running} (Intermediate, Passive) EXP: 5.3%. {Russian} (Novice, Passive) EXP: 0.1%. {Sense Bloodlust} (Advanced, Passive) EXP: 9.4%. {Sneaking} (Beginner, Active) EXP: 40.2%. {Walking} (Master, Passive) EXP: 5.3%.
"Stats Window"
Mental Stamina: 19/31
10) Working smarter not harder isnt lazyness right? Tuesday, September 8th, 2015 I woke up early, for me anyway, around 11am and started getting ready for my afternoon shift. Did the usual routine of letting the dog run in circles in the yard, breakfast, shower, etc. I headed to work while trying to sort things out. The attack last night was pretty scary then but after thinking about last night, and this morning, it seemed fairly stupid. Whoever the guy was it seemed his power was either super strength or some kind of limited control over gravity or inertia. He ran like a normal person might run on a low gravity planet, all leaps and bounds. Actually the rock going through several windshields made it likely it was super strength or inertia control so I tentatively crossed off gravity control. Either power didn''t seem to give him any ability at distance attacks since his accuracy was low. So it was either he was stupid, didn''t realize he sucked at throwing, was surprised to meet me, or figured out I noticed him and attacked early. I could never rule out stupidity but planning around that seemed a quick path to the mortuary. Arriving at work I kept sorting out ideas as I went through the shift. I doubted he could see at night, a block away, that my eyes had slightly moved from straight in front to see him. I knew I didn''t give off any killing intent since I just barely noticed him before the attack. That left him being surprised or not realizing he sucked at targeting a block away. I honestly thought anyone with any kind of preplanning would have realized they couldn''t hit someone a block away without practice. And if he was prepared he wouldn''t have had to pick random rocks off the ground. Being surprised made the most sense but left the question I''d avoided so far. How had he suddenly realized a block away that I had a power. I refused to believe he randomly attacked people or even I would have heard something about it despite not following local news closely. Which left that weird resonance feeling I had from him. I had felt something strange I couldn''t quite describe from him but it was mostly drowned out in the {Sense Bloodlust} feedback. If he had suddenly felt that and knew that it meant another person with a power then things made sense. He was surprised, attacked haphazardly, and then ran when it looked like I was closing on him. It took a while to sort out all that and rule out ideas so I was finished my shift before I got any further. Deciding to do at least one round of strengthening I started to do it while trying to picture things from my attackers view. As best I could it seemed like ''I was walking along, felt the jogger ahead had a power, decided to test him out/kill off rival, threw some rocks that missed but stirred up a lot of noise, and the jogger started...''. Trying to picture it only led to new questions. Why did he attack? And how did I appear to him? I doubted I could figure exactly why he attacked without more information. But while doing my sets I started figuring out how I appeared. So far everyone I''d seen on news seemed to have one power. And if I think about it I could call my ability something like ''RPG reality'' or something chuunibyou like ''The dark truth of the world comes forth''. To my attacker though I likely seemed to be hiding in shadows since that''s the only skill I used as I move forward. I felt the pain as it moved from my specific muscles to all over my body and absently quit right in the middle of a set and left the gym to head to the library. I sincerely doubted I could fight strength to strength anytime soon even if there were no absolute limits on my strength. Likely his power is still growing also. The key seemed like it would be to avoid fighting until I have a lot more skills, or try and fight on my terms. In the meantime there was two things I needed from the library. One was a book that would give me the {Acting} skill. If I''d had that I wouldn''t have had to be worried the night before about police stopping me. I had no confidence in my ability to act calm when my adrenaline was so high right after seeing the monstrous damage those thrown rocks did. The second was some kind of skill to do throws. Not throwing rocks but using the opponents strength against him to grab and throw him when he attacked. It seemed suicidal to try and throw what was likely a younger and much, much, stronger man but trading punches would likely end with his fist coming out the back of my skull as he punched all the way through. I reached the library, found the book on acting I''d noted down before, and took it upstairs to the reading area. It was a bit quieter than the other day with no one near so I closed my eyes and tried to learn the skill. After about 10 minutes a much heavier pain than normal hit, along with the expected window.
Due to your actions you have gained a Skill. The skill {Acting} (Novice, Passive) EXP: 0.0%, has been created.
The window faded slowly and I was about to check how much Mental Stamina I had left when a second window popped up.
You have reached 20 Intelligence. Due to your reaching 20 Intelligence you have unlocked the Basic Help feature. Due to your reaching two stats above 20 you have fully unlocked your Basic Stats window.
I tried to sort out what that meant. I couldn''t say I felt much smarter after the window popped up. More like I was slightly dazed. But Basic Help and Basic Stats seemed useful. First things first though. "Stats Window"
Agility13/13
Hand-Eye8/8
Intelligence20/20
Luck4/4
Mental Stamina16/32
Physical Stamina19/19
Strength16/16
Vitality15/15
Wisdom14.5/14.5
Ignoring all the new stuff for a minute I concentrated on Mental Stamina. It seemed that trying to absorb skills from a book gave 0.0% in the skill, and cost 50% more for 15 Mental Stamina. Was it because I wasn''t actually using the skill when it was created? That seemed a bit difficult. I had to give up the idea of learning some type of unarmed throwing from one of the books for a bit though. Another skill from a book would leave me at 1 Mental Stamina and I still had the evening shift at work soon. With supper and walking the dog I had no time to take a decent nap before the shift. So when I reached home I just grabbed the dog and sat on the couch to figure out what the stats meant. They seemed fairly obvious from all the games I had played but I decided to try activating the new help feature out while figuring out the stats. "Help Agility"
Agility - A measure of how well your body moves.
A remarkably useless description. From that description it could mean it is raised by doing obstacle courses or even by doing Yoga poses. If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it. I quickly ran through the others.
Hand-Eye - A measure of how well your hands fine motor control and coordination.
Intelligence - A measure of how fast you comprehend new information.
Luck - A measure of how well you bend random chance in your favor.
Mental Stamina - A measure of how well your mind deals with rearrangement.
Physical Stamina - A measure of how well your body can move for periods of time.
Wisdom - A measure of how well you weigh multiple options.
Vitality - A measure of how well your body resists diseases and other abnormal states.
None of the descriptions were very surprising except the stat he had previously, Mental Stamina. "A measure of how well your mind deals with rearrangement" sounded fairly scary but gave a clue to something. From that description it seemed like my mind was being rearranged or maybe even partitioned to make new skills. The pain was likely from that. Which when I thought of it didn''t make sense. Brains don''t really have nerve endings for pain I thought. Headaches are actually pains from around the outside of the brain. It didn''t make sense, but lacking sense didn''t make the pain from the newly gained {Acting} go away so I had to give up on understanding that for now. Maybe a higher level of help would explain it. Next was testing help on my skills. "Help Acting"
{Acting} Novice - Creates and enacts a character with a few basic facts but little emotion. Beginner - Creates and enacts a character with a few basic facts and very basic emotions.
It worked after all. But I only had the skill to Novice 0.0% EXP. It was a bit surprising it showed what the next level did. Obviously the next step was to check my highest skill. "Help Walking"
{Walking} Novice - Never missteps, and is 5% less tiring, on simple surfaces like concrete. Beginner - Never missteps, and is 10% less tiring, on simple trails. Intermediate - Never missteps, and is 15% less tiring, on simple wet flat surfaces such as flooring or concrete. Advanced - Never missteps, and is 20% less tiring, on surfaces with less than 6" level changes such as tree root covered trails. Master - Never missteps, and is 25% less tiring, on slippery surfaces such as ice. Grandmaster - Never missteps, and is 30% less tiring, on surfaces that are at least partially solid like Marsh land. Requires 20 Willpower to enforce upon the world.
The last line obviously stood out in the window. It mentioned a new level of skill I hadn''t seen before and a requirement for a stat, Willpower, that wasn''t in the Basic Stats window. "Help Willpower" ...Nothing. I quickly browsed through the other skills but all the low level ones were roughly what I expected. The only one that was interesting was {Sense Bloodlust}
{Sense Bloodlust} Novice - Detects hidden hostility within 50 feet, open hostility within 100 feet. Sharp pain all over the side facing the hostile person. Beginner - Detects hidden hostility within 100 feet, open hostility within 200 feet. Sharp pain all over the side facing the hostile person. Intermediate - Detects hidden hostility within 200 feet, open hostility within 400 feet. Sharp pain all over the side facing the hostile person. Advanced - Detects hidden hostility within 400 feet, open hostility within 800 feet. Pain is felt where the hostile person eyes are focusing. Master - Detects hidden hostility within 800 feet, open hostility within 1600 feet. Pain is felt where the hostile person is currently attacking towards. Can detect feints.
The mention of hidden hostility and being able to detect feints stood out. The utility of detecting all feints was obvious in any fight. But the hidden hostility ability might be useful at any time to avoid ambushes. It also might explain how I was originally still able to detect the hostile husband through the walls occasionally when I gained the skill. If I could walk down the street and detect enemies in buildings a block around me that was incredibly useful. After a bit it was time for work, so I practiced {Sneaking} as I went to work. Work was fairly uneventful except for two things. One was for an unusual night workout for the Urinal Bard who decided to sing off-key for 10 minutes at the one of the urinals. The other was for {Sneaking} to hit Intermediate.
Through use of the skill {Sneaking} it has reached Intermediate level. {Sneaking} (Intermediate, Passive) EXP: 0.9%. You have gained 0.5 Agility. You have gained 0.5 Wisdom. You have gained 1 Mental Stamina.
It seemed that I could now see how the Basic stats increased as I gained skills. Seeing the gains made some sense and I looked forward to understanding how the other skills raised stats. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I got home around 1am and started browsing the net. Dozens of new powers were being reported by the different news outlets. There were way too many to try and sort out myself even though I had a few hours. After a few hours of browsing and thinking I had a flash of brilliance. Find a website that''s tracking the powers in detail, or encourage someone to do it. It would be helpful if a number of them turned out to be hostile or had powers I might be able imitate. I had found long lists of potential skills from RPG games and elsewhere. But if someone''s power gave me an idea for a new skill I was more than glad to take it. If someone tracked it all, and published it online, then I could work smarter and not harder by just reading summaries instead of hundreds of web pages of information. With a last check of my skills I went to bed a bit early thinking I''d be able to sleep in. "Skills Window"
{Acting} (Novice, Passive) EXP 0.0% {Climbing} (Beginner, Passive) EXP: 4.9%. {Hiding} (Intermediate, Active) EXP: 14.3%. {Knife Fighting} (Novice, Passive) EXP: 0.0%. {Memorization} (Novice, Passive) EXP: 6.7%. {Pain Tolerance} (Novice, Passive) EXP: 45.3%. {Running} (Intermediate, Passive) EXP: 5.3%. {Russian} (Novice, Passive) EXP: 0.1%. {Sense Bloodlust} (Advanced, Passive) EXP: 12.6%. {Sneaking} (Intermediate, Active) EXP: 11.8%. {Walking} (Master, Passive) EXP: 5.8%.
11) Ive got the power! Almost? Wednesday, September 9th, 2015 *DING* A loud sound woke me just before 7am, less than 4 hours after I went to bed. A window was waiting when I opened my eyes.
A quest has been created Escape Capture You quest is to avoid capture or death until 12:34pm EST Friday, September 11th, 2015. Rewards: 1000 EXP, +1 to all Basic Stats Failure: Possible death or torture. You can not refuse this quest.
My first thought was ''Now there''s quests, and non-skill EXP?''. Then I noticed what it actually said not just the words that jumped out. I couldn''t say I wasn''t scared, but the fact that there was a warning and a time limit was somewhat comforting. The time limit was a bit strange though. Was the attacker leaving town or maybe being attacked by someone else then? Even waking up this early to the quest sound was strange when I thought about it. Did the guy who threw the rocks the other day make a final decision just minutes ago? Or do quests update at a certain time? Or is it someone else even? Perhaps another person with a power or the police tracking me down about the other night. For all I knew the city police might have someone with a super detective power. There were too many questions and no real answers. I had until 2pm Friday off so the first thing that came to mind was the line "avoid capture or death". To avoid I needed to get away from my house. If it was the super strength guy I really didn''t want him tossing the neighbor''s eBike or a small car through my front wall. Staying in a hotel for two nights seemed the best option. If I picked one away from my place I could safely scout around and escape back there. To do that I needed to do a couple things. One was laundry. I was almost out of clean clothes and the hotel stay was already going to break my bank account. Buying a few full sets of clean clothes wasn''t worth it. The other thing was finding a pet hotel for little miss trouble. Even though some hotels take pets I didn''t want her near me and risking something happening. I started the laundry, took the dog out, and ate breakfast. While eating I started browsing hotels and pet hotels. A bit after 9:30am I was done the laundry, had booked a room online, and phoned and made a spot for the dog, and packed a backpack with a couple days of clothes and necessities. The pet hotel wasn''t far from the woods I''d trained {Walking} originally and I still had hours before I could check into my hotel so I decided to work on a few skills. My Mental Stamina was pretty high these days so I decided to work on getting two new skills and raise {Running} through running any trails or open spaces I could find in the woods. First up though was trying to learn some kind of identify skill. It felt a bit silly but I walked through the woods saying the names of each type of tree and flower I recognized. When I wasn''t sure I didn''t try and guess, instead I took a pic of leaves to try and study later in case I didn''t gain the skill and had to try again another day. It was almost two hours of trying before the pain and the window came.
Due to your actions you have gained a Skill. The skill {Identification} (Novice, Passive) EXP: 2.3%, has been created. You have gained 1 Intelligence. You have gained 1 Mental Stamina.
I''d wasted most of the morning gaining it but it was nice to have. Or at least hopefully it was. "Help Identification"
{Identification} Novice - Compares things, and people, to users strongest declarative memories. Beginner - Compares things, and people, to users moderately strong declarative memories.
It seemed to work well with my {Memorization} skill. I suspected if I memorized a lot of things then at higher levels I''d remember them even if I didn''t spend a lot of time learning it. "Stats Window" [/b]
Agility13.5/13.5
Hand-Eye8/8
Intelligence20/21
Luck4/4
Mental Stamina23/34
Physical Stamina19/19
Strength16/16
Vitality15/15
Wisdom15/15
I mainly wanted to check my Mental Stamina but looking at the window I noticed my lowest stats were Luck and Hand-Eye. I needed to think of some way to raise them, maybe if I picked the right skills to get they would increase. There were limits on what I could do in the short term though even with 2 days off I had a long list of things to do already. My next skill was a 4th physical one. {Jumping} went well with {Running} and {Climbing}. In theory I could then do some kind of Parkour type movement through the city or bush which would enhance dramatically my ability to escape or chase someone. I picked a moderately rocky area of exposed bedrock outcroppings. Thank you Canadian Shield for making so many easy training areas. It went dramatically faster, similar to other physical skills, and in less than 30 minutes I got the upgrade to my headache and the blue window.
Due to your actions you have gained a Skill. The skill {Jumping} (Novice, Passive) EXP: 0.7%, has been created. You have gained 0.5 Agility. You have gained 0.5 Strength. You have gained 1 Vitality. You have gained 1 Intelligence. You have gained 1 Mental Stamina. You have gained 1 Physical Stamina.
The difference in stat increases when creating a physical skill was nuts. I wasn''t sure how the pattern of stat increases worked but decided to try and memorize them with {Memorization} and write in my cell to help planning later. I was pretty hungry at that point since it was around lunch so I left the woods and hit a corner store about 3 blocks from the edge of the woods. It wasn''t very healthy but I still wanted to raise {Running} before heading to the hotel since I could check in and recover Mental Stamina after 1pm. I''d been paying attention all along looking for any aggression with {Sense Bloodlust}, and for any resonance, with no real luck. Other than a few random hits I''d hadn''t noticed anything all morning. I didn''t mind whoever it was not tracking me down while I skilled up but it made me wonder if I''d wasted my money on the hotel and pet hotel. To train up {Running} and {Jumping} at the same time I decided to do a short route around the area I used to gain {Jumping}. I''d leave one side of the exposed bedrock through trails into the woods and come out on the opposite then cross back to the starting point with jumps across the rocks. Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. An hour and a half later I had shaved off 6 Mental Stamina, maybe some sanity points, and gained a skill up in both skills. {Running} was now at Advanced, {Jumping} was at Beginners, and I was mentally exhausted. I gained a total of 1 Agility, 1 Strength, 1 Wisdom, 2 Physical Stamina, 2 Vitality, and 2 Mental Stamina. With only 7 Mental Stamina remaining, a monstrous headache, and it being almost 2pm I decided to head to the hotel with 1 quick stop. A small plus to all this was my {Pain Tolerance} was slowly increasing. I made a quick 5 minutes trip in and out of the Library to borrow a book on martial art throws and headed to the hotel. I checked in, set my alarm for 6pm and happily collapsed. I was short on sleep from the quest popup and exhausted from training. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Woke up at 6pm from the cell phone''s alarm. Said fuck that, reset it, and went back to sleep for another hour. When I woke I was mostly pain free and checked my stats first. I was curious about how much my Mental Stamina had recovered. "Stats Window"
Agility15/15
Hand-Eye8/8
Intelligence22/22
Luck4/4
Mental Stamina28/37
Physical Stamina22/22
Strength17.5/17.5
Vitality18/18
Wisdom16/16
If I had been gaining so many small stat increases all along it made me a bit afraid to calculate what my base stats might have been 11 days ago. My Mental Stamina hadn''t recovered fully but it was more than enough to try and gain a skill from the book so I stayed lying on the bed, relaxed, and tried focusing on the book. The skill took a lot longer than the previous two skills from books. It was almost 8pm before the familiar pain made me open my eyes to the skill window.
Due to your actions you have gained a Skill. The skill {Unarmed Throws} (Novice, Passive) EXP: 0.0%, has been created. You have gained 0.5 Agility. You have gained 1 Hand-Eye. You have gained 1 Intelligence. You have gained 1 Mental Stamina.
It felt very strange to gain Agility while lying flat on a bed doing nothing. Hand-Eye didn''t bother me quite as much since it was heavily related to the skill. I was pretty hungry again so I left the hotel and hit a sub shop. One steak and cheese sub later I was ready to take on the world. There still wasn''t any resonance feeling or unusual hostility. Though the crazy guy in the corner of the sub shop helped raise my {Sense Bloodlust} skill a decent chunk. I went back to the hotel and decided to try out their small gym. They had a decent pool but I didn''t want to drain myself getting another skill today. A number of sets later I got the first of a kind window along with the same feeling I''d had from other workouts.
You have gained 1 Strength.
I had been pretty sure that''s what I was gaining the other times but it was worth the 30 minutes to double check. And extra strength wouldn''t hurt, even if I couldn''t fight strength to strength against the guy from Monday, I might need it against someone else. I was still tired and not fully mentally recovered, especially with the new {Unarmed Throws} added, so I decided on one last idea before going to bed very early. I left the sub shop a bit after 9:30pm and started doing a spiral search around my hotel while practicing {Sneaking} and {Hiding}. I slowly spiraled out almost a half mile from the hotel with no hits by the time both leveled. I gained 1 Agility, 1 Wisdom, 2 Mental Stamina total. It was close to midnight as I headed back to the hotel and got a surprise since I hadn''t been paying attention.
Through use of the skill {Pain Tolerance} it has reached Beginner level. {Pain Tolerance} (Beginner, Passive) EXP: 0.2%. You have gained 0.5 Wisdom. You have gained 1 Mental Stamina. You have gained 1 Physical Stamina.
I added another mental and cell note on how I was gaining stats and walked the rest of the way back to my room to sleep. After reaching my room I collapsed on the bed and checked my stats first, then skills before falling asleep. My stats were slowly powering up it seemed. "Stats Window"
Agility15/16.5
Hand-Eye8/9
Intelligence22/23
Luck4/4
Mental Stamina4/41
Physical Stamina22/23
Strength17.5/18.5
Vitality18/18
Wisdom16/17.5
"Skills Window"
{Acting} (Novice, Passive) EXP 1.5% {Climbing} (Beginner, Passive) EXP: 4.9%. {Hiding} (Advanced, Active) EXP: 3.7%. {Identification} (Novice, Active) EXP: 2.3%. {Jumping} (Beginner, Passive) EXP: 1.8%. {Knife Fighting} (Novice, Passive) EXP: 0.0%. {Memorization} (Novice, Passive) EXP: 8.2%. {Pain Tolerance} (Beginner, Passive) EXP: 1.3%. {Running} (Advanced, Passive) EXP: 7.9%. {Russian} (Novice, Passive) EXP: 0.1%. {Sense Bloodlust} (Advanced, Passive) EXP: 35.4%. {Sneaking} (Advanced, Active) EXP: 9.9%. {Unarmed Throws} (Novice, Active) EXP: 0.0%. {Walking} (Master, Passive) EXP: 10.4%.
12) Self-mutilation is for losers. Thursday, September 10th, 2015 A sudden barrage of pain woke me up early. I could feel the aggression pouring in through the east windows. By the time I had sat up, and jumped out of bed, the pain had moved to the south wall. There was a brief moment of resonance and then the pain moved towards the west wall. I quickly threw on some clothes and in my bare feet ran out the door to the window at the south end of the corridor. The traffic on the bypass was passing by a hundred feet from the window. I tried to flatten my face to see west lane but all I saw was dozens of cars and two transports steadily driving away. None of them stood out from the others as the pain gradually dulled and disappeared.
You have gained 1 Luck.
It the was first time I''d seen my luck go up, and considering I had such a low stat in it I needed it badly. I headed back to my room after checking the time. It was 6:48AM. Happily my keycard was in the pants I pulled on so I wasn''t locked out. I changed into some clean clothes even though there was no time to shower and left the hotel. The goal was to get a good block and a half from the hotel and highway as soon as possible and see if the guy came back. I wanted to be outside the resonance range but inside my {Sense Bloodlust} and try to get some information on the guy like what he looked like, car he drove, or anything possible. I was in this for the long haul, not looking for a fight I couldn''t win yet. The longer I had to train the more skills and stats I could grind. I really wanted to raise {Unarmed Throwing} but walking up to random people and throwing them wouldn''t go over well for some reason. Joining most martial arts clubs would also likely be pointless since I doubt they would let me walk in and start throwing people either. I tried to think through my options while looking for a good view of the hotel. A street corner a bit away still gave a decent view of the hotel''s parking entrance so I sat there for good 30 minutes while waiting. Nothing. Either the guy was headed somewhere he couldn''t be late, didn''t notice the resonance, or wasn''t the driver, or maybe some other reason. I wasn''t going to bet on him not noticing the resonance. While I waited I had time to think of what to do if he didn''t show. I decided the morning would be spent training until around 11am. There''s was small chance he might come for me during lunch so I''d setup like this again. After eating lunch if he didn''t find me I''d try to locate wherever he worked in the afternoon. I headed back to the hotel and started grinding for strength points for an hour and a half. Three strength points later it was time for breakfast and the next step in my not very cunning plan. A department store was about four blocks away so I picked up some swimming trunks, a hooded jogging top and pants. Afterwards I headed back to the hotel to get a new skill and hopefully more stats from gaining it. A half hour later I was in the pool trying to gain {Swimming}. Gaining another movement skill was a piece of cake after learning {Running}, {Climbing} and {Jumping}. A headache, large mouthful of water, and coughing fit later I had the {Swimming} skill.
Due to your actions you have gained a Skill. The skill {Swimming} (Novice, Passive) EXP: 0.4%, has been created. You have gained 0.5 Agility. You have gained 0.5 Strength. You have gained 1 Vitality. You have gained 1 Intelligence. You have gained 1 Mental Stamina. You have gained 1 Physical Stamina.
The clock on the wall said 9:47. I had an hour to grind the swimming skill before I had to worry about my theory of him coming back at lunch.
Through use of the skill {Swimming} it has reached Beginner level. {Swimming} (Beginner, Passive) EXP: 3.2%. You have gained 0.5 Agility. You have gained 0.5 Wisdom. You have gained 1 Vitality. You have gained 1 Mental Stamina.
"Help Swimming"
{Swimming} Novice - Swimming is 5% less tiring. Very basic treading water is automatic. Beginner - Swimming is 10% less tiring. Simple dog paddle is automatic. Intermediate - Swimming is 15% less tiring. Competent technique breaststroke and backstroke are automatic.
Again, even though I was only at Beginner I could see the next level which was a bit useful in planning. I took a shower, switched to my new track clothes, ate lunch at the hotel, and downloaded an app over the free Wi-Fi before heading to my viewing spot. Happily I had remembered to pack my sunglasses so I sat down and watched a bit before loading the new app. One bonus was that apparently a middle aged man sitting at the side of the road on a work day really annoys some people. {Sense Bloodlust} was slowly going up as drivers passed by. The new app was a simple free memory testing game. Since I''d have lots of time I started grinding {Memorization} while I waited. I didn''t want to waste any of my time other than eating and other requirements of life. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Two hours later the sunglasses were in my pocket, an intermittent mist like rain was falling, and I''d leveled up {Memorization} twice to Intermediate. My patience and mood had dropped as fast as my headache had risen. While I was already stronger than I started that morning I still had no clues on the enemy. I started sorting out where he could have went. If he had stayed in the city then if he turned right he was near the new hospital, or up top the hill near the College and University campus. If he turned left and went south he might be downtown, near the Courthouse, near the Humane Society, or in a small warren of housing near the highway. Or in any spot between. The left exit was a much, much bigger area than the right since the hill was basically a plateau running along the entire north side of town and not as much was built up top it. I decided to search the right side exits of the highway first. That side was roughly a mile long strip with a road up to Campus at the far end. If I jogged in a zigzag pattern I could search most of it with {Sense Bloodlust} in less than 30 minutes. Adding on searching the campus and I could be done before 2:30pm. That would likely let me pass 90% or so of the people at that side of the highway. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ A whole lot of nothing later I had crossed the highway near some of the industrial areas past the Humane Society and was working my way back towards downtown. The area on this side was at least three times bigger but I didn''t have to run up a long sloping road to go up 300 feet so it was a much easier run. It was almost 4pm and still lightly raining when I felt the resonance. For some reason my {Sense Bloodlust} hadn''t triggered first this time. The neighborhood was a mix of houses, a few regular office buildings, and a number of houses converted to be offices. Traffic was a bit snarled from road construction but nothing else really stood out. By that point I still had a headache, was damp but not quite soaked from the hours of light rain, and long since lost any patience. I kept moving forward trying to pin point the resonance. It didn''t seem to match with any of the people I could see but was steadily growing much stronger than I''d felt before. I was starting to get cold feet and thinking of turning back when the passenger door of a pickup 20 feet from me blew off into the sign for a lawyers office. A maybe 25 year old man wearing jeans, t-shirt, and an orange safety vest sat up and climbed out of pickup. He was still wiping the sleep from his eyes as he turned to me. "Motherfucker," was all he yelled as he jumped towards me in a single bound. It was all too fast for me to run or even jump out of his way. A nearby older woman with faster reactions than me was already screaming as he landed in front of me. {Sense Bloodlust} shot a pain to my face. Whipping my face to the side as fast as I could I dodge a fist that might have crushed my skull if it hit.
Due to your actions you have gained a Skill. The skill {Dodging} (Novice, Passive) EXP: 4.2%, has been created. You have gained 0.5 Agility. You have gained 0.5 Strength. You have gained 1 Vitality. You have gained 1 Intelligence. You have gained 1 Mental Stamina. You have gained 1 Physical Stamina.
He had already pulled his fist back and was throwing his entire weight behind another punch, this time to my chest, when the {Dodging} window popped up and the headache hit. I barely got my left arm in the way of the punch before his fist hit it and crushed it into my chest. With a crunch, and massive pain, I was sent flying for the first time in my life. Landing on my ass more than 10 feet back I was already sure I''d had another first, my first broken bone. Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website. A second woman had started screaming as he closed on me. "This is for burning my house down," was his second shout. He pulled his leg back as through he was trying to kick my nuts into the distance and let it fly at me. Dodging to my right my chest shot sickening pain into my brain as he missed and fell backwards from the strength of his own kick. It was obvious again that he wasn''t used to his super strength as he flopped onto his back. I scrambled to my feet and started to run. Ever breath hurt my chest but there was no way I''d try to keep fighting. {Sense Bloodlust} was going insane and hit Master as I ran. I ignored the window while the pain was barely a blip compared to everything else. The pickup door flew by so close I could feel the wind. Despite all the jogging my {Running} hadn''t reached Master, because it wasn''t very challenging running, but my recent agility and strength gains had improved my running speed. As I bolted down the street I ran into driveway and started crossing through backyards to cut across blocks while activating {Sneaking} and {Hiding} to try and break line of sight from him. Resonance might tell him in what rough direction I was but the farther I got the bigger the errors would be. And if he had to go around a block I might be out of resonance range before he made it. The pain in my chest and arm started to diminish as it spread across my body similar to how it had in workouts. Even with one useless arm I was up and over most of the fences in moments with {Jumping} or {Climbing}. By the time I was three blocks away from where we fought I could feel him from {Sense Bloodlust} only. I didn''t stop running and headed away from downtown and my hotel towards the new hospital. I really didn''t want to check in there since there would be questions from the emerge staff and maybe police. Being linked to the fight with the construction worker would likely get my name in the paper or news and I needed to avoid that. I was most of a mile away when I slowed, found a quiet shaded spot where I was out of view and looked at my arm. The track suit had a red stain halfway down my forearm. The bone in my left arm was snapped and one piece was poking out through the skin slightly. There was blood slowly leaking from that while the skin was flushed and discolored in a 4" band around where he hit. My chest had the start of a large bruise and what I was guessing was a cracked or broken rib or two. With my adrenaline starting to fade the pain was mounting only for me to get another window.
Through use of the skill {Pain Tolerance} it has reached Intermediate level. {Pain Tolerance} (Intermediate, Passive) EXP: 5.6%. You have gained 0.5 Wisdom. You have gained 1 Physical Stamina. You have gained 1 Mental Stamina.
I quickly checked my Pain Resistance and it was up to 8%. I still felt like someone had beaten me with a 2x4 all over my body even if my arm and chest hurt no worse. Trying to set my arm was basically impossible for me. There was no way I wanted to try doing it while relying on YouTube instructions from my phone or something silly like that. I decided to sit there a bit and let {Pain Tolerance} and my pain resistance level up. The bleeding was barely a trickle and the longer I could put between my going in to the hospital and the fight, the better I could pass it off as a jogging accident or something. Especially if I tossed my jacket and just wore my t-shirt and jogging pants to look different than any eye witness views. I doubted anyone had a good glimpse of my face with the hood up. Over the next half hour I went through what happened. I assumed he was taking a nap while waiting for a ride or to drive someone or some other reason. The few words he spoke obviously meant he mistook me for someone else. And almost certainly someone with resonance that he didn''t previously get a good look at. So somewhere around the city there was another power user, maybe with a fire ability but obviously willing to burn down a house just from feeling resonance in it. The pain from my arm was distracting so it slowed my thinking down but being sure about all the implications was important. I''d gotten my ass kicked with no real ability to fight back because I was impatient. By the end of the half hour my {Pain Tolerance} was at 35.8%, and Pain resistance hit 10%, when yet another window opened.
Due to your actions you have gained an Ability. The ability {Regeneration} (Novice, Passive) EXP: 0.2%, has been created.
It took a moment for me to process that it was first time I''d seen that window. I thought it was a skill window at first, but it said Ability and there were no stat bonuses. "Ability window" got nothing. "Abilities window" got nothing also. I assumed I needed to unlock a few abilities before I could see the list. Next I tried "Help Regeneration".
{Regeneration} Novice - Heals small scrapes, cuts and bruises at 2 times users normal rate. Beginner - Heals cuts less than 1/4 inch deep, deep tissue bruising, small bone cracks, and 1st degree burns at 4 times users normal rate.
That was dramatically different than my skills which seemed mentally based. I had a flash of insight that made me wonder how I could have been so dumb all along despite all the intelligence upgrades. I''d done help on a number of skills and the new ability but never the basic windows. "Help basic stats"
Basic Stats are primary physical and mental stats that Advanced stats are derived from.
"Help skills"
Skills are mental constructs that control your mind or your mind''s control of your body at the lowest level. Higher levels affect the universe.
"Help quests" and "Help advanced stats" gave nothing. However, "Help abilities"
Abilities are physical powers that adjust your body''s parameters. Higher levels go far, far beyond human limits.
Thinking about the help messages and the new Ability {Regeneration} made the difference clear. Abilities were things that affected the body instead of the mind. It might even be possible to get a {Superhuman Strength} one that went beyond human even at mid levels. Whereas Skill based Strength would be focusing my strength and leverage to the max, at least until the Grandmaster level that I saw mentioned in {Walking}. The problem was that Novice {Regeneration} seemed essentially useless for the injury I had. It was slowly going up but since it was only closing the wound where the bone poked slightly through and my bruises at 2 times speed it would take days just for the lightest damage to heal. And the bone or my ribs wouldn''t be fixed until it leveled up. In the 10 minutes I had running through different windows and ideas {Regeneration} had only gone up 0.1%. I wasn''t sure if it would hit Beginner for hours. And that''s sadly when I had my second brilliant idea. I took my jacket, rubbed the blood stain on the arm in some mud to hide it, and headed to the drug store 3/4 of a mile away. I bought a 2 dozen protein bars, 4 large elastic bandage wraps, a package of pins, a pen knife, and some scissors, then headed back to the hotel. With the increase in my {Sense Bloodlust} range I didn''t care if he came at me. I''d sense him before he reached the hotel or resonance range. Likely he was dealing with the police or on the run with his coworkers being questioned. I stripped down to the buff in my room, grabbed everything I bought and headed to the bathroom. Sitting with my feet in the tub I wrapped my left arm up to hold the bone from moving too much and then started on my idea. I slowly stuck pins into my upper thigh on both legs, high enough that if it left marks they would be hidden by shorts. {Regeneration} started gaining EXP faster. Ignoring all windows I slowly marked up my skin with pinholes, then cuts from the knife, that went deeper and deeper, from 6pm until 3am. The only breaks I took were to eat, since I needed my right hand to hold food, and to wash off the blood. At 3am I was too tired and dizzy to continue. I cleaned myself and collapsed into bed. Fuck my power. Fuck losing the fight. I refused to check my progress as I drifted to sleep. 13) Now with more character! Friday, September 11th, 2015 My cell''s alarm went off at 6:15. If the construction worker was going to drive by at the same time I had a good 30 minutes to prepare. The pain was a dull ache throughout my body. Only when I touched the broken bone or tried to touch anything with left hand did it specifically ache, and even that drained into the general pain if left a bit. First I needed a shower, so I went and cleaned up a bit of the blood and skin I missed cleaning last night out of the tub. It was already awkward to shower one handed and being distracted made it tougher, but I started going through the windows I''d ignored last night. "Stats window"
Agility15/15
Hand-Eye8/8
Intelligence23/23
Luck5/5
Mental Stamina42/42
Physical Stamina23/23
Strength20/20
Vitality18/18
Wisdom18/18
Everything was much higher than when I could first see my stats window. I was pretty sure my Mental Stamina alone was over 4 times higher than the day I gained my power. For all the good it did me yesterday. "Skills Window"
{Acting} (Novice, Passive) EXP 1.5% {Climbing} (Beginner, Passive) EXP: 7.9%. {Dodging} (Novice, Active) EXP: 8.8%. {Hiding} (Advanced, Active) EXP: 6.3%. {Identification} (Novice, Active) EXP: 2.7%. {Jumping} (Beginner, Passive) EXP: 4.5%. {Knife Fighting} (Novice, Passive) EXP: 0.0%. {Memorization} (Intermediate, Passive) EXP: 43.7%. {Pain Tolerance} (Advanced, Passive) EXP: 8.6%. {Running} (Advanced, Passive) EXP: 12.5%. {Russian} (Novice, Passive) EXP: 0.1%. {Sense Bloodlust} (Master, Passive) EXP: 2.1%. {Sneaking} (Advanced, Active) EXP: 13.7%. {Swimming} (Beginner, Passive) EXP: 3.2%. {Unarmed Throws} (Novice, Active) EXP: 0.0%. {Walking} (Master, Passive) EXP: 12.4%.
I now had 2 Master skills and 4 Advanced that were pretty far from leveling up. Most of my Novice and Beginner skills could be leveled with just an hour or two of work if need be. Intermediate and Advanced were the levels where the EXP started to slow down. I still couldn''t see my EXP in {Regeneration} but I''d felt it level up twice over the hours of ''training'' I did. It was a similar to how I felt when I gained Heat Resistance. "Help Regeneration"
{Regeneration} Novice - Heals small scrapes, cuts and bruises at 2 times users normal rate. Beginner - Heals cuts less than 1/4 inch deep, deep tissue bruising, small bone cracks, and 1st degree burns at 4 times users normal rate. Intermediate - Heals serious cuts, bone cracks, and large 1st degree burns at 8 times users normal rate. Advanced - Heals all stab wounds into muscle/skin, almost completely broken bones, and 2nd degree burns at 16 times users normal rate.
At Intermediate {Regeneration} I could see ahead to the Advanced rank. But even Advanced didn''t do what I needed since the bone was completely broken. One plus though was that the wound where the bone had been poking out was scabbed over completely and most of the bruising was gone. Even if the bone was snapped below the skin, the injury looked like it had taken place days ago. At the rate I was healing I had a near perfect alibi by Saturday. If I went into Emerg Saturday morning and explained I hurt myself days earlier and the pain wasn''t going away, they would likely X-ray and set it for me. With {Regeneration} likely to hit Advanced sometime in the next few days, even if I didn''t try to raise it, I''d get 16 times healing speed. I could take an 8 week cast off in 3-4 days. I dried off and wrapped my left forearm and hand in the elastic bandages. There was nothing wrong with my hand but it would help remind me to not pick anything up with that hand. It was close to 7am when I was done and still no warning from {Sense Bloodlust} so I started watching the morning news. I''d lost track of what was going on over the last few days and still had 5 hours until the quest was complete. CNN was covering fighting people super powered people across the world. It took me a while to catchup but happily they like to repeat the basic information a lot. That helped in the first hour, buy by the second it was wasting my time so I started searching specifics on my cell. Apparently ''The Echo'' was what the media was calling the resonance. It had first appeared on Sunday, 7 days after I''d gotten my notification about the {Walking} skill. Most people hadn''t noticed it since they didn''t live too close to another person with powers. And those that noticed it were generally peaceful or at least afraid of doing anything the police could charge them for. So during the first few days only minor isolated fights broke out that didn''t make the news because the people didn''t have flashy combat abilities. Having a power to be the world''s best pilot didn''t help block a punch to the face from a super powered poker player. A fight like that looked like a normal brawl. By midweek people with flashy combat powers like super speed, or throwing ice balls, had started clashing and making headlines. Likely the construction guy had gotten his house burned down on Sunday or he wouldn''t have attacked me Monday night. I couldn''t find a mention of it though on any of the local news websites. But then I wasn''t sure if they covered every fire. There was however a brief blurb about me getting my ass kicked the day before. The police were looking for 2 men who had fought near the courthouse yesterday. One was identified but the police weren''t releasing his name until they had located and questioned him. They were asking for any witnesses to help identify the other person. I decided right then and there to wait to go to the hospital on Sunday. The scab should mostly be healed then. I''d just need a story about falling at home and thinking the pain would go away or something when I went in. It might be good EXP for {Acting}. By 10 I put on a light jacket to cover the bandages and checked out. It was still drizzling a bit so I didn''t look too out of place. Even if it had been sunny and warm I''d still likely wear it until I was home. I stopped at the library on my way back, returned the book on martial arts, and picked up a book each on English, French and Japanese. From the math I''d been collecting, ever new skill gave me a guaranteed 1 Intelligence and 1 Mental Stamina. So having an {English} skill which should level fast would help grind a few more points. If I could grind French up I could get a government job easier if I needed it. It would also help communicate in some of the smaller towns around my city that were mainly French. I lived in an 80% English city so my French had faded since learning it in school. The border to Quebec was only a 30 minute drive away so improving my French would help if I went that way. Japanese was obviously for Anime and manga raws. By noon I was home, unpacked, and had cleaned the dog''s food and water dish for when I picked her up in the afternoon. I had time to gain {English} from the book before the quest ended so I did. If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.
Due to your actions you have gained a Skill. The skill {English} (Novice, Passive) EXP: 0.0%, has been created. You have gained 1 Intelligence. You have gained 1 Mental Stamina.
I watched the time close on 12:34, and precisely then I got the window popup I''d been waiting for.
Your quest ''Escape Capture'' was successfully completed. You have gained +1 to all basic stats. You have gained 1000 EXP.
The window faded only to be replaced by another.
You have reached Level 1. The Character Window has been unlocked. The Basic Stats Window has been merged with the Character Window. The Titles Window has been merged with the Character Window.
I assume that meant I started off at level 0 when I gained this power. "Character Window"
ClassNone
Level1
EXP1925
Next Level EXP2000
Title
Agility15/16
Hand-Eye8/9
Intelligence23/25
Luck5/6
Mental Stamina42/44
Physical Stamina23/24
Strength20/21
Vitality18/19
Wisdom18/19
Titles available Slightly Masochistic, Not So Slightly Masochistic, Moderately Masochistic.
I''d tried to ignore the new titles I''d gained over the night from not taking pain pills while grinding up {Pain Tolerance} and Pain Resistance but there they were. I decided to go into work a bit early so that I could pickup the dog earlier. I trained {Sneaking} continuously but it was going up fairly slowly. A few coworkers asked about my bandaged arm but a little bit of {Acting} and a story of scraping it badly during a fall let me off. Skipped working out after the shift and headed straight to the pickup the dog. She was ecstatic to see me and way too full of energy so I took her on a nice long walk along the bike path and back to home. A quick dinner, absorbing the skill {French}, and off to work again.
Due to your actions you have gained a Skill. The skill {French} (Novice, Passive) EXP: 0.0%, has been created. You have gained 1 Intelligence. You have gained 1 Mental Stamina. You have gained 50 EXP.
I hadn''t really wondered about my EXP level or my level either. With no real reference it was hard to start puzzling either out. Now that I saw I gained 50xp per new skill I wondered what I got for leveling up a skill. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Work was extremely boring. Other than some {Sneaking} and {Acting} grinding it passed without anything special. I can''t quite describe my mood other than mentally exhausted from trying to raise {Regeneration} all the previous night. I had absolutely no interest in grinding skills. No interest in watching the news. All I needed was to snuggle with the dog and get some sleep. Tomorrow I would try to make a plan for getting stronger, but for now I needed a break. I checked my new window and skills one last time before bed. "Character Window"
ClassNone
Level1
EXP1975
Next Level EXP2000
Title
Agility15/16
Hand-Eye8/9
Intelligence23/26
Luck5/6
Mental Stamina42/45
Physical Stamina23/24
Strength20/21
Vitality18/19
Wisdom18/19
Titles available Slightly Masochistic, Not So Slightly Masochistic, Moderately Masochistic.
"Skills Window"
{Acting} (Novice, Passive) EXP 38.3% {Climbing} (Beginner, Passive) EXP: 7.9%. {Dodging} (Novice, Active) EXP: 8.8%. {English} (Novice, Passive) EXP: 60.7%. {French} (Novice, Passive) EXP: 0%. {Hiding} (Advanced, Active) EXP: 9.1%. {Identification} (Novice, Active) EXP: 3.2%. {Jumping} (Beginner, Passive) EXP: 4.5%. {Knife Fighting} (Novice, Passive) EXP: 0.0%. {Memorization} (Intermediate, Passive) EXP: 43.9%. {Pain Tolerance} (Advanced, Passive) EXP: 17.5%. {Running} (Advanced, Passive) EXP: 12.5%. {Russian} (Novice, Passive) EXP: 0.1%. {Sense Bloodlust} (Master, Passive) EXP: 3.7%. {Sneaking} (Advanced, Active) EXP: 19.4%. {Swimming} (Beginner, Passive) EXP: 3.2%. {Unarmed Throws} (Novice, Active) EXP: 0.0%. {Walking} (Master, Passive) EXP: 12.8%.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Author''s note: I''m trying to do about 2-3 chapters per week at least. I''d hoped I would be writing faster by now but I haven''t really sped up much if any. Btw, chapter isn''t very long. I had to resist cramming a bunch of ideas in because of the characters mood but more for other days! 14) Maybe I can resist eating 12 donuts in 30 minutes now. Saturday, September 12th, 2015 I slept in until 1pm, almost 10 hours of good solid sleep. I would have slept more but the dog deciding to lay down across my throat messed that up. On the plus side I felt a lot more relaxed and refreshed from sleeping in, after I stopped choking. First things were first, took the dog out, made breakfast, caught up on some web novels, gained my first headache of the day so I could start it properly.
Through use of the skill {English} it has reached Beginner level. {English} (Beginner, Passive) EXP: 2.7%. You have gained 0.5 Wisdom. You have gained 1 Mental Stamina. You have gained 5 EXP.
The last line of that window helped answer part of the question on where the 1975 EXP came from. A new skill was 50 EXP and leveling up one was 5 EXP. Since I had 1980 EXP now all I needed was to level up 4 skills or gain one new one. As far as grinding stats go though it seemed far more productive to gain new skills and grind them up to Intermediate where the growth slowed. In terms of survival getting skills to Grandmaster seemed the most important but the help on both Master level skills showed Grandmaster needing 20 Willpower to use the full effect. And finally in terms of fighting I needed to level up some combat skills. A week before I''d thought that Stealth > Evasion > Escape > Fighting > Talking. Now that I''d learned a bit more about how my power works I really needed to rethink the basics. I grabbed my notes and looked through them. {Sneaking} and {Hiding} were both Advanced and steadily improving. I hadn''t found any kind of {Camouflage} or {Cover} skill, but I hadn''t really tried either. {Hiding} seemed fairly powerful at picking spots where I couldn''t be seen. The idea of {Camouflage} seemed to be that you might be seen but you wouldn''t be recognized as human because you broke up the shape of your body. {Hiding} would tell me to hide behind a bush where I couldn''t be seen, but {Camouflage} would put me in the bush where I could see them but they wouldn''t realize I was there. In my head it flip-flopped back and forth between being a skill or an ability. Or it could be both, the skill of recognizing and applying camouflage to myself, and the ability to change my skin to match the surroundings. Unfortunately I still had no real clue how to gain abilities. {Regeneration} wasn''t anything I had planned. Which left the option of going across town and picking up some camouflage sticks or clothing and finding a good spot to test it against passerby''s eyes. It was worth testing if I could find the time. I''d gained some of the Evasion skills like {Running}, {Jumping}, and {Climbing}. They were far from maxed out but they had saved my ass on Thursday. I had absolutely no Escape skills or abilities. Unless dislocating or smashing my wrists to get out of straightjackets/handcuffs counted. Since in theory I''d heal fast if {Regeneration} kept leveling. For fighting skills I had gained 3 but it wasn''t easy to level them. {Dodging} might be possible if I joined the dodge ball league in town but that only ran a couple months in the winter. About the only combat in town was bar fights and at a fairly large number of martial arts clubs. Beating drunks up, or worse yet losing to drunks, wasn''t an option. The trouble with joining a dojo was that it would make me stand out way too much. Considering how fast skills go I''d go from clumsy to half-decent in a single day. I''d still be no threat to experienced members but it would be noticeable. If I could get the first couple levels done then it wouldn''t be a problem. Intermediate and above are slower and I could pretend I was shaking off some rust in my skills for a bit. The only thing I could think of was going on Craigslist or similar sites and paying for practice partners. If I trained only once or twice with any particular person they shouldn''t be too suspicious. The only question is how many hits I''d get in a city of 50k. How many skilled teachers or practice partners were posting ads? Or would check regularly for people who posted ads wanting help? It was worth a shot to search and post and ad later. The last section of my survival notes was Talking. I''d picked up {Acting} and several languages. {Persuasion}, {Bribery}, and {Threaten} were other potential skills I''d thought of from games. {Persuasion} seemed the most likely to not get me slapped or punched if I tried them on coworkers so I picked that for my short list. So I made a new, updated list. In the first section was three points. To try and gain a {Persuasion} skill. Try and find a training partner for combat skills. And consider going to buy some camouflage stuff. The second section was thoughts on creating and grinding skills just to get stats. I started trying to list things I could do that wouldn''t take long to create, wouldn''t cost much, and would be easy to practice for a couple levels. Obviously languages was the simplest. There were multiple books at the library that qualified to gain the skills from. And thousands of language lessons on YouTube to watch. I also had collected audio lessons for French and Japanese over the years that could help. All that would get me some Intelligence, Wisdom and Mental Stamina. Unfortunately it wouldn''t help much with someone trying to punt my nuts up through my skull. For physical stats I needed physical skills. I could grind the ones I had but one obvious one came to mind, {Biking}. I could get that in a few minutes likely and there was the paved Paceway plus tons of mountain bike trails around the city. I tried thinking of a few more physical skills but mainly sports came to mind. That didn''t feel helpful at first, I mean I knew running around an Ultimate Frisbee field would increase {Running} but not as much as running trails. Until I realized that there''s likely {Kicking}, {Throwing} skills. And those I could do anywhere. Hell I couldn''t really do {Unarmed Throwing} without someone, but I could try {Unarmed Strikes} on some mats if I stood them against a wall at work. In theory I could likely do something similar with a knife at home. By hanging a plastic bag from a ceiling fan I could use it as a target even if I didn''t plan to carry a knife around it would be nice to get a level or two in it for stats. The final section of the notes I made was a list of skills to raise as soon as possible. {Acting}, {English}, {French}, {Identification}, {Russian} were all skills I should be able to level one or two ranks at home. Though I''d likely need some type of script for {Acting}. I should be able to find a few monologue scripts somewhere, Shakespeare''s works if need be. I''d never thought I''d be standing in front of a mirror seriously saying "To be or not to be". There was still a lot of unknowns but after a few hours I''d thought through enough ideas to fill my days for weeks. I needed to prepare before construction dude came back, or house burner found me. It was almost 3pm, the libraries closing time, by the time I''d sorted all that out on paper. I still hadn''t absorbed the {Japanese} skill but I ran to the library, dropped off the English and French books, and picked up the first 5 language books I could find since it was almost closed. I brought back books that reacted to my hand on Arabic, Dutch, German, Mandarin, and Spanish. There were books on Hindi, Italian, Korean, Portuguese, and a few others but I couldn''t grab too many at once. When I got home I absorbed the book from yesterday.
Due to your actions you have gained a Skill. The skill {Japanese} (Novice, Passive) EXP: 0.0%, has been created. You have gained 1 Intelligence. You have gained 1 Mental Stamina. You have gained 50 EXP.
As soon as that faded I got the second expected window.
You have reached Level 2. The languages window has been unlocked.
I stared at that second line until it faded. It seemed to confirm something I''d felt in the back of my mind. My power was adapting to my ideas on how it worked. There were likely limits at the start when it was weak but if I concentrated on Languages it would make a new window for it. I couldn''t be sure still but the timing was suspicious. "Languages window"
{English} (Beginner, Passive) EXP: 46.8%. {French} (Novice, Passive) EXP: 0.0%. {Japanese} (Novice, Passive) EXP: 0.0%. {Russian} (Novice, Passive) EXP: 0.1%.
English was already leveling just from writing my notes and rereading them it seemed. I had a couple hours before to setup my phone with audio lessons to listen to at work. But before that. "Character Window"
ClassNone
Level2
EXP2030
Next Level EXP4000
Title
Agility16/16
Hand-Eye9/9
Intelligence26/27
Luck6/6
Mental Stamina27/47
Physical Stamina24/24
Strength21/21
Vitality19/19
Wisdom19/19.5
Titles available If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.Slightly Masochistic, Not So Slightly Masochistic, Moderately Masochistic.
The jump in required EXP for the next level was somewhat expected but still annoying. It would take a while to reach level 3. 27 Mental Stamina was more than enough to level each skill a couple times so it was mostly dependent how long I needed to listen to the audio files to level up. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I finished my shift around 11pm there was one surprise and a few level up''s. The surprise was that when the first skill leveled up, {English} hitting Intermediate, I got a 2nd window.
You have reached 20 Willpower. A bonus of +1 has been applied to your Wisdom. You can now see an advanced stat.
The Advanced stat window only showed Willpower.
Willpower19.75/20
{Sneaking} and {Hiding} both got a bit of EXP while {English} had reached Intermediate just from talking with coworkers. {French} and {Russian} hit Beginner before the shift was over. For a cost of 9 temporary Mental Stamina I gained a permanent 1.5 Wisdom, 3 Mental Stamina, and 15xp. Another mild surprise was that when I gained two 0.5 increases, 1 point total, in Wisdom I gained another 0.25 in Willpower. From what I could tell I needed to learn around 100 core words to reach Beginner in a language. While audio files were nice since I could do other things they were also limiting since I could have read them much faster and used {Memorization} to get Beginner in minutes likely. The gym was still too crowded for me to want to try and gain {Kicking}. I really wanted to avoid anyone seeing me practice. The less others knew, the less rumors might spread. Work had a lot of gossip. I knew because I was horrible myself! I filled a plastic bag with a couple dozen other bags, marked an X on the side with electrical tape and hung it from a ceiling fan. The goal was to try and hit the X as often and fast as possible. I didn''t want to hit too hard and break the fan. Accuracy and timing were the goals, strength would go up as my body improved. After a few strikes with a dull kitchen knife I checked my skills window and saw {Knife Fighting} was going up. The dog was lying on the bed staring at its crazy owner as I kept stabbing the inoffensive plastic bag. My right arm was starting to tire out fairly fast but I couldn''t hold anything with the left. I was already getting spikes of pain the broken bone just from swinging my body around. 40 sweaty minutes later I got the window and the headache upgrade.
Through use of the skill {Knife Fighting} it has reached Beginner level. {Knife Fighting} (Beginner, Passive) EXP: 2.7%. You have gained 0.5 Wisdom. You have gained 1 Hand-Eye. You have gained 1 Mental Stamina. You have gained 5 EXP.
I was pretty exhausted physical and mentally by that point but decided to do one last thing and go to sleep a bit early. I quickly took the dog out, made a snack, and sat down at the computer to re-watch Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun with subtitles. I already knew some Japanese so it was easy for the skill to gain EXP fast.
Through use of the skill {Japanese} it has reached Beginner level. {Japanese} (Beginner, Passive) EXP: 4.9%. You have gained 0.5 Wisdom. You have gained 1 Mental Stamina. You have gained 0.25 Willpower. You have gained 5 EXP.
After watching the first three episodes I was already more than halfway to Intermediate but I called it there and decided to go to bed. I''d gotten into the habit of checking a few basic windows before bed but I decided to check a bit more. "Character Window"
ClassNone
Level2
EXP2050
Next Level EXP4000
Title
Agility16/16
Hand-Eye9/10
Intelligence26/27
Luck6/6
Mental Stamina12/51
Physical Stamina24/24
Strength21/21
Vitality19/19
Wisdom19/22.5
Titles available Slightly Masochistic, Not So Slightly Masochistic, Moderately Masochistic.
"Skills Window"
{Acting} (Novice, Passive) EXP 41.5% {Climbing} (Beginner, Passive) EXP: 7.9%. {Dodging} (Novice, Active) EXP: 8.8%. {Hiding} (Advanced, Active) EXP: 9.1%. {Identification} (Novice, Active) EXP: 5.2%. {Jumping} (Beginner, Passive) EXP: 4.5%. {Knife Fighting} (Beginner, Passive) EXP: 2.7%. {Memorization} (Intermediate, Passive) EXP: 48.2%. {Pain Tolerance} (Advanced, Passive) EXP: 21.5%. {Running} (Advanced, Passive) EXP: 12.5%. {Sense Bloodlust} (Master, Passive) EXP: 4.3%. {Sneaking} (Advanced, Active) EXP: 26.1%. {Swimming} (Beginner, Passive) EXP: 3.2%. {Unarmed Throws} (Novice, Active) EXP: 0.0%. {Walking} (Master, Passive) EXP: 13.3%.
"Languages Window"
{English} (Intermediate, Passive) EXP: 13.5%. {French} (Beginner, Passive) EXP: 9.2%. {Japanese} (Beginner, Passive) EXP: 71.8%. {Russian} (Beginner, Passive) EXP: 6.4%.
"Advanced stats Window."
Willpower19.75/20.5
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Author''s Notes: Next update might not be until Monday. I''ll try for before then but between an extra shift, flooring being inlaid, and just being a slow writer I can''t promise anything. I might do editing of earlier chapters when I only have a few minutes here and there. 15) I used to like grinding quests. Sunday, September 13th, 2015 I woke up to the sound of bubbles popping at 10am. Surprisingly I woke up before the dog, who was still dreaming while curled up beside my head. Her barks sounded like bubbles popping interspersed with normal barks. I had no real plan except getting my arm fixed so I waited for her to wake while I tried to think of some training I could do at the hospital. According to a couple quick web searches I''d done the other day, it would take a few hours wait in Emerg, x-rays, maybe breaking it again, and a cast. That meant I''d be at the hospital most of the afternoon. While I waited on the dog to stop dreaming I made my plans. I''d go to the hospital by noon, start a diary of everything that had happened from the start to raise my English, and practice memorization whenever that got boring. Trying not to wake the dog I said, "Help English".
{English} Novice - Can understand a number of core concepts like ''help'', ''toilet'', ''buy'' through listening or reading. Beginner - Can understand a number of core concepts through both listening and reading. Can communicate them too by either writing or speaking. Intermediate - Can understand simple sentences and communicate them back. Advanced - Can understand complex concepts and mostly communicate them back.
Looking ahead at Advanced it seemed fairly easy to reach if I had the time. I figured I should be able to reach Master if I could write down all my experiences in the last two weeks. Even if I wasn''t the best writer I should be able to communicate what happened. After I reached Master in English maybe I could start writing my experience in other languages to reach Master in them. The dog had stopped barking and was sleeping normally so I decided to check on the {Regeneration} ability but it was still at Intermediate. It hadn''t leveled during the night. There was no sign of injury on my left forearm except a small bump where the bone was pushing up my skin. All the bruising and the wound were gone. With all visible signs healed the {Regeneration} ability could only speed up my healing, not directly fix it. Reaching over to the bed side I grabbed my phone and started scrolling through the apps to make sure I had things ready. Either my movement, or the sound of pressing the home button, woke the dog. I had a good note app that I could use for the diary. A memory testing app. Two Japanese language apps. And a map app which gave an interesting idea. A standard in dungeon RPG games was automatic mapping. It wouldn''t be that helpful in a city I knew very well but in a place like Toronto it could make a huge difference. Looking at the other apps I tried to think if some of them could be turned into skills. Likely I could learn to schedule things with a mental calendar skill. Take still shots or videos, though I''d likely need a drawing skill to show anyone else. An accurate clock ability might prevent me from being late. Mental calculation is always useful when sorting bills. Maybe memorization of music would let me play songs for myself? The possibilities seemed nearly endless if I had weeks of uninterrupted time to test things. The rest of the apps seemed unlikely to be useful. I doubted I could create skills to browse the internet or social media sites for example. With the dog staring at me I gave up, took her out, made breakfast, took a shower, and got ready to head to the hospital around 11am. I didn''t bind my left arm since there was no visible problem with it anymore. Opening the map app I entered in the new regional hospital at my destination and started following the instructions. After 30 boring minutes of staring at my phone I reached the hospital parking lot. As I closed the app and looked around for the Emergency entrance a window popped up and the first headache of the day started.
Due to your actions you have gained a Skill. The skill {Mapping} (Novice, Active) EXP: 4.9%, has been created. You have gained 1 Intelligence. You have gained 1 Mental Stamina. You have gained 50 EXP.
I was a bit surprised by the name. I wasn''t creating a map, just following it, so I thought I''d get {Orienteering} for a skill. As the window faded I was about to check the help on the {Mapping} skill but another far more surprising window popped up.
You have unlocked the Explorer Class.
I stood at the edge of the parking lot, staring into space for quite a while after the window faded. Yet again I felt dumb for not going through every possibility as I gained information. After shaking off my self criticism I decided to get myself registered at the Emerg desk before starting to figure things out. I had hours of waiting and pain to go and sorting things outside wasn''t going to speed that up. A good 10 minutes of filling out paperwork, explaining I didn''t trust my doctor, and a stare down with the nurse later, I was sitting in a corner of the waiting room. With no one paying particular attention to me I quietly started muttering keywords. "Help Class", was the keyword I found eventually.
You have unlocked 3 classes. Class can be changed at any point. Explorer Spy Warrior
"Help Warrior"
Focuses your power into reinforcing your combat capacity at the expense of other skills and abilities. Increased rate of experience for combat related skills and abilities. Reduced rate of experience for non combat related skills and abilities. Increased Hit points gain per level. Decreased Mental Energy gain per level. Requirement: 2 combat skills, {Pain Tolerance}, {Regeneration}.
"Help Spy"
Focuses your power into reinforcing your evasive and stealth capacity at the expense of other skills and abilities. Increased rate of experience for stealth or combat related skills and abilities. Reduced rate of experience for non stealth or combat related skills and abilities. Requirement: {Hiding}, {Sneaking} and {Knife fighting}.
"Help Explorer"
Focuses your power into reinforcing your survival and language capacity at the expense of other skills and abilities. Increased rate of experience survival and language related skills and abilities. Reduced rate of experience for combat related skills and abilities. Requirement: 1 pet, {Sneaking}, and {Mapping}.
I really didn''t want to go the warrior route. Even if I was now fairly strong and healthy for my age from the stat gains I didn''t think combat was quite right for me. Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere. Spy seemed interesting. It would improve my chances of living and escaping. However the reduced rate of gaining EXP in many of my skills seemed to cut down on my growth in the short term. Since I planned to create a number of new skills and level them to Intermediate for stat gains the Spy class didn''t make sense. That left Explorer. There was a reduction on how fast I could level combat skills but other than that it seemed fine. The part about 1 pet was a bit weird but hopefully would make sense eventually. I quietly a few commands. "Help change class", "Change Class", "Change Explorer" with no luck until I said "Change Class Explorer". Pain my brain so hard I felt my vision grey out immediately. Within a second after that I was unconscious. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I woke up on a bed in one of the examining rooms. A passing nurse was kind enough to explain I''d passed out almost 5 hours earlier and that they had taken X-rays of my left arm, a blood sample, and were thinking of an MRI. Using {Acting} I explained my way out of the MRI by saying I hadn''t eaten that morning and just passed out from hunger. Happily she eventually bought it and let me buy some food from a vending machine. She had wanted to start an IV drip which I was happy to avoid. As soon as she was gone I was able to have a snack and check "Character Window"
ClassExplorer
Level0
EXP0
Next Level EXP1000
Title
Agility16/16
Hand-Eye10/10
Intelligence27/28
Luck6/6
Mental Stamina16/51
Physical Stamina24/24
Strength21/21
Vitality19/19
Wisdom22.5/22.5
Titles available Slightly Masochistic, Not So Slightly Masochistic, Moderately Masochistic.
My class, level, EXP and EXP to next level were all changed. The fact that it reset my level made it obvious that even if I could change classes at any point there were clearly reasons not to. The hit to my Mental Stamina must have been huge though, even 5 hours later I hadn''t recovered much. The doctor on duty came by a bit after I finished my snack and window browsing. He''d checked the X-rays, noticed the bone out of place, and approved of resetting it. It was the most intense pain I''d ever seen coming and I prefer not describing how I dealt with it. The nurse didn''t press charges is all I''ll say. By 7pm I was out of the hospital and on my way home with another useless title and no skill gains in {English} or {Memorization} like I had planned. {Pain Tolerance} though was at 59.3% and would possibly hit Master before I went to sleep so that was good. I took the dog for a quick walk before it got dark and then started making supper. While the oven heated for baking my chicken burgers I started browsing the news. There were now thousands of people who had shown their powers across the world. Fights between some of the more combat orientated had destroyed city blocks. Most though were just living their lives and trying to help others with their new powers. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ After a few hours wasted browsing the news while eating and I felt a bit better about my situation. A number of people had been killed or crippled. I was safe, mostly whole, and slowly improving my power. I started writing my diary of how things had happened. I had 16 Mental Stamina so I couldn''t gain too many skills but leveling up {English} would only take 3. After finishing the first two days I started day 3 when I felt the headache and saw the window pop up.
Through use of the skill {English} it has reached Intermediate level. {English} (Intermediate, Passive) EXP: 1.3%. You have gained 0.5 Wisdom. You have gained 1 Mental Stamina. You have gained 5 EXP.
Which reminded me I was so caught up in the class stuff earlier in the day I had never looked at {Mapping}. "Help Mapping."
{Mapping} Novice - Ability to locate and orient yourself on maps. Beginner - Ability to review and mentally mark maps you have recently seen or memorized.
It was already fairly late at that point, my headache was fairly bad, and the distributed body pain was still intense, so I decided to take the dog out and head to bed early. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Trying to find a position where I could sleep without the cast bothering me was hard. I was thinking of different ways to position it so I wouldn''t move it overnight when a window popped up with a *DING*.
A quest has been created.
Capture!
You quest is to ''Capture Your Enemies'' before 3pm Wednesday, September 16th, 2015.
Rewards: 500 EXP, +1 to all Basic Stats per enemy captured
Failure: Possible death.
You cannot refuse this quest.
I stayed up hours trying to think of various plans or ideas until I drifted off to sleep with the bedside light still on. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Author''s note: Here''s what the dog does occasionally when sleeping. This video isn''t her, just one that shows the bubble sound. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azGNLFFVDxo 16) I R Copyman! Monday, September 14th, 2015 I woke up less than 3 hours after finally falling asleep to two anticipated windows and a bunch of surprises, including one window I ignored.
Through use of the skill {Pain Tolerance} it has reached Master level. {Pain Tolerance} (Master, Passive) EXP: 12.2%. You have gained 1 Physical Stamina. You have gained 0.5 Wisdom. You have gained 1 Mental Stamina. You have gained 0.25 Willpower. You have gained 5 EXP.
That was somewhat expected and very welcome.
Through use of the skill {Regeneration} it has reached Advanced level. {Regeneration} (Advanced, Passive) EXP: 3.1%.
Which was even more welcome. It had been days since it went up last. As it faded the first surprise popped up.
You have reached 2 Healing Rate. A bonus of +1 has been applied to your Vitality. You can now see all advanced stats. The Advanced Stats Window has been merged with the Character Window.
As soon that faded I opened the Character window. [td colspan="4"]Title[/td][td colspan="4"]Titles available: Slightly Masochistic, Not So Slightly Masochistic, Moderately Masochistic, Seriously Masochistic[/td]
ClassExplorerLevel0
EXP10Next Level EXP1000
HP190/200MP230/235
Physical Energy240/250Mental Energy530/540
Psi280/280KI210/210
HP Regen3.0/minMP Regen0.24/min
PE Regen0.25/minME Regen0.54/min
Psi Regen0.28/minKI Regen0.21/min
Agility16/16Hand-Eye10/10
Intelligence28/28Luck6/6
Mental Stamina53/54Physical Stamina24/25
Strength21/21Vitality19/20
Wisdom23/23.5Willpower20.5/20.75
... I had Mental energy, Magic points, Psionic points and KI? The other ones I could kind of accept but how the hell did I use those? It wasn''t hard to link various stats to each other but it still was fairly confusing. That wasn''t the most confusing thing of the morning though. The most confusing thing was the weird feeling I had that was getting stronger and stronger as though someone was poking me on the forehead harder and harder while telling me to close my eyes. It was impossible to resist after a couple minutes so I closed my eyes only to see the Earth floating in space instead of darkness. As I watched thousands of red lights lit up all over the world. Suddenly I felt as though a cold hand grabbed me and painfully squeezed me while dragging my viewpoint was downward until I floated hundreds of miles above Ontario. The view reminded me of a population map, the type that show a light for each unit of population, since most of the lights in Ontario were clustered along the south border. I could easily pick out Toronto, Kingston, Ottawa and my city. My viewpoint was drawn closer and closer until I was floating a few miles above my city. There were 4 red dots on the city, all at the center. Moments after I thought of that the number 4 was put on the top right corner of my vision, moving around as I looked around. The pain from the invisible hand crushing me was growing until I was opening my mouth to scream at whoever was doing that to me. Before I could say anything though my body was launched like a rocket upwards. The number blurred through 10''s, 100''s, 1000''s, 10000''s as I flew higher. I was stopped as though I had hit a wall when the whole Earth was visible. All the lights were visible, even through the planet, for a moment while the counter was at 729385, when the view ended and I found myself back in bed. Thoughts of stats and the other things in my Character window were gone from my head. Cold foreign facts sat in my mind. I was absolutely sure the counter was how many people had a power. There were 3 others in a 30 mile radius with a power. And I could see that view whenever I wanted. My first thought was that we weren''t killing each other fast enough for whatever was behind these powers. A week ago exactly we gained the resonance or ''The Echo'' as the media called it. Now the one or ones responsible had upped ante. Would there be even more knowledge like the city blocks where people were located next Monday? Names and faces the Monday after that? Pondering that I got up and started getting ready to search. I needed to find those 3 and get ready if they were all hostile. I already knew the construction worker was and I doubted he was ready to listen to me. He seemed the type to kill first and ask questions never. One question that occurred to me while eating was, did this new map come from whoever gave us these powers, or was it from one of those who gained a power? A quick browse of the news didn''t answer the question but it did show that many people were reporting that they could see the map when they woke up. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I decided to start my search just northeast of where I searched the other day. From there I would zigzag along a path that searched most of the northeast and east parts of the city. That would be around 3 square miles of blocks, but it was spread across a much wider area. I left home and started the search around 10:30am. I decided to pickup a new jogging top on the way since the hood on the last one didn''t hurt to have when I was in front of witnesses. After spending more money I was on my way to search with a mix of running and walking. The long search gave me lots of time to think about the windows I had first thing in the morning. {Pain Tolerance} was helping a lot and so was Pain Resistance. Pain Resistance was at 31%. "Help Pain Tolerance"
{Pain Tolerance} Novice - Allows the user to tolerate minor pain by compartmentalizing the pain into one section of the brain. Beginner - Allows the user to tolerate lesser pain and ignore minor pain if need be. Intermediate - Allows the user to tolerate moderate pain and ignore lesser pain if need be. Advanced - Allows the user to tolerate serious pain and ignore moderate pain if need be. Master - Allows the user to tolerate critical pain and ignore serious pain if need be. Grandmaster - Allows the user to tolerate any pain, ignores all but deadly pain, and reduces pain felt by allies by a rank. Requires 20 Willpower to enforce upon the world.
Grandmaster level seemed like it would be incredibly useful when I reached that. However since I was healing at 16 times with Advanced {Regeneration} my arm should be totally healed after another day or two. The way I''d read it {Regeneration} could quickly heal the bone as soon as it had started to fuse together and could count as not completely broken. I double checked with help.
{Regeneration} Novice - Heals small scrapes, cuts and bruises at 2 times users normal rate. Beginner - Heals cuts less than 1/4 inch deep, deep tissue bruising, small bone cracks, and 1st degree burns at 4 times users normal rate. Intermediate - Heals serious cuts, bone cracks, and large 1st degree burns at 8 times users normal rate. Advanced - Heals all stab wounds into muscle/skin, almost completely broken bones, and 2nd degree burns at 16 times users normal rate. Master - Heals minor organ damage, resets and heals broken bones, 3rd degree burns at 32 times users normal rate.
Browsing windows kept me somewhat busy but it was a fairly boring search overall. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Just after 1pm I was hungry but had finished the search. I''d had to cover well over 15 miles by looping around different sections of streets. I didn''t find any Resonance though. I''d pushed myself with regularly running until I was a bit out of breath but didn''t get any Vitality or Physical Stamina out of it which was fairly disappointing. And a bit confusing. One plus was {Mapping} leveled up from Novice to Beginner and then Intermediate from plotting a route on my cell, memorizing it and then executing the route. The speed slowed down a lot after reaching Intermediate though. I headed back home to eat while going over my gains. 10 EXP, 2 Intelligence, 1 Wisdom, 0.25 Willpower, and 2 Mental Stamina in total. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ At home I downloaded some free Spanish audio lessons while I took the dog out and cooked a fast late lunch. I wanted to have something to listen to while I searched the south end of the city during the afternoon. I decided to try and see if that would be enough to gain the {Spanish} language skill. I had borrowed the skill book but it was a lot less painful to gain it without the book. The south part of the city was fairly narrow at first as it followed the lake and then slowly widened as the side streets got longer. I decided to follow the main road south and search the side roads on my way back north. Putting on the audio lessons, I started my run. Less than 15 minutes later I felt it. I had passed a strip mall, a number of restaurants, businesses and a few houses before I reached the main mall of the south end side. I slowly started to circle the mall. It was made up of stores along the front and a few that could only be reached through a hallway inside. I wasn''t in a hurry to meet them since I preferred to locate them first if possible. If they were still I could triangulate them to some extent. About 5 minutes into circling I was fairly sure the person was in the pet store that faced the parking lot and I''d finally got the {Spanish} notification.
Due to your actions you have gained a Skill. The skill {Spanish} (Novice, Passive) EXP: 2.4%, has been created. You have gained 1 Intelligence. You have gained 1 Mental Stamina. You have gained 50 EXP.
I''d expected that, the pleasant part was the following window.
By learning 5 languages to the Novice level you have gained a new title. Title "Polyglot I" has been gained. Title "Polyglot" has the effect of speeding language comprehension by 5%.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there. Saying "Equip Polygot I" worked the first time. I might have been getting better at guessing, or the system might be more flexible. It was hard to tell. A few minutes afterwards I''d made a complete circle around the mall and was 100% sure the person with a power was in the pet store. What was interesting was the bloodlust I was sensing from that store. It wasn''t surprising they had noticed me circling. It was a bit hard to understand at first. If I compared the construction workers bloodlust as a giant spotlight hurting me everywhere, the multiple bloodlust pains were more like pen lights in comparison. Standing at the far edge of the parking lot I had to make a decision. Go in, wait for them to come out, or leave entirely. Going in felt stupid, waiting felt like I was a stalker, and leaving entirely just put things off. While waiting was likely the most prudent thing I had a bad feeling if I spent too long doing it I would get another title I''d be ashamed of. I slowly walked towards the outside entrance to the pet store. There was another entrance inside the mall to it, but the hallways in there were bound to have security cameras. When I was within about 30 feet of the door I could see a woman standing visible behind the glass. The Resonance was coming from her. What was strange though was there was no bloodlust at all. I raised both hands to show they were empty and then waved at her with my right. In theory that was to show I wasn''t dangerous. In practice almost every movie I saw that in someone was about to pull a dirty trick, hopefully she never had that realization. I had a rough idea of what I wanted to say when I realized she wasn''t hostile. When I got a bit closer and the reflection off the glass wasn''t as overpowering I could tell she was a brunette, maybe mid 20''s to late 20''s, fairly cute and almost my height. She stepped back to let me open the door and I stepped in. Up close I could see her name tag read Janice. "Hello, are you here to-" she said before I cut her off while I glanced around the store. The sources of the bloodlust was pretty obvious now that I was inside. "Wait, let me say something first. I can tell you aren''t thinking of attacking me, and I am not interested in attacking you. It is freaking me out to feel so much bloodlust from puppies, kittens, and baby rabbits though. Can you do something to calm them down?" "What do you mean calm them, they are just sitting in their cages," she asked while looking confused. "Take a look, each of them is eyeing me. I assume it''s part of your power. If not then at least some would be asleep or playing or something." She studied them for a bit while I stayed still. I had a weird tingling in my hands. Figuring it was from adrenaline I tried calming myself too with some slightly deep breaths but it wasn''t going away. The bloodlust though was slowly decreasing until it was fairly mild and the animals started behaving more normally. "Thanks. Having a power to control animals is pretty cool." "No, I don''t have a power to control them. Actually I know I have something since I felt the Echo a few times like the TV news mentioned but I can''t control the animals. They seem to listen a lot more when I ask them to do something but still do what they want." "You can''t feel them or anything?" "No, the only thing new I can feel is the Echo off people like you," she said. It kind of reminded me of a novel I read as a kid. There was an easy experiment to find out though. I don''t why but the tingling in my hands was still getting stronger not weaker. It felt familiar but I couldn''t quite place it. "Did you say anything out loud to them when you felt me come close?" "No, I was scared since I''d watched a lot of fighting on the news but I don''t really talk to myself or pets unless I want them to do something. I''ve never wanted to grow into the crazy cat lady role of talking to them, instead I prefer to quietly cuddle and play with them." She was clearly feeling a lot more comfortable with me now that we were talking about the animals. I had my doubts about her being the quiet type even if she thought she was. "Try an experiment. Face away from them, towards me, and in your head ask them to roll over. Don''t say it out loud." She face me, closed her eyes for some reason and seemed to try it. Past her I could see about half the animals roll over. A quarter just laid down. The rest were all cats that seemed to be ignoring her. "Projective telepathy with animals. Most times telepathy is mentioned they talk about reading minds, but that''s only incoming thoughts. Talking to another person or animal''s mind is projecting. They can obviously refuse, or not understand, but can''t ignore you since you are sending it directly to their head." The tingling in my hand was so bad now that I felt like it was vibrating. "So I can talk to them but not hear them," she asked. "Maybe someday you can hear them, I don''t know. That''s likely why they were sending bloodlust out, they felt you being scared and wanted to protect you." She was saying something but I tuned her out, I had figured out what the tingling was. It was the same feeling as when I was in the library running my hands over books to try and find skill books. "Can I touch your head? I promise it won''t hurt or do anything bad to you. My power seems to be to make things like a computer RPG game. I think if I try I can identify your ability," I said out of nowhere to her. I was pretty sure if someone had come up to me with that line I''d be more scared but she surprised me and accepted right away. But then I knew she was fairly trusting or she would have run away when I first showed up. I was a bit afraid of her future. She likely had a string of bad boyfriends bossing her around, and with people with powers out there it might be worse. I carefully reached out and put my palm on the top of her head while asking her to try giving the animals. Normally it took 20 minutes to get a skill book to work but apparently people were different.
Would you like to copy the power ''Projective Telepathy-Mammals''?
"Your power is Projective Telepathy with Mammals. Which is why the snake and spider pets didn''t show bloodlust I guess. It''s asking me if I want to copy it. Do you mind?" "I won''t lose it," she asked. "The wording is usually very accurate, it will only copy not steal," I replied. "Okay." Again she was way too trusting. I''d met a few people that in my life but very few were adults. I said "Copy" before blacking out yet again. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ When I woke I was alone in the store''s backroom sitting on the floor against the wall. Apparently she had dragged me there. Likely a small benefit of moving heavy feedbags around. I ached a bit in my right arm, I think I must have fell on it. Happily after a bit that would spread across my body and dampen. The brutal headache though, I had no real hope it would disappear until I slept and woke. A window was waiting for me.
Due to your actions you have gained a Power. The power ''Projective Telepathy - Mammals'' has been created. You have unlocked the Powers Window.
"Help Powers"
RPG Growth Projective Telepathy - Mammals
"Help RPG Growth"
The RPG Growth power allows you to focus and slowly grow your power using a RPG interface.
So it wasn''t that the world was an RPG world, more that my power let me interface with it that way so I could pick which things to grow first. Janice must have heard me talking out loud, she came through the doorway as I was thinking about the implications of all that. "I tried it out a few times afterwards while I waited for you to wake up. The dogs listened to me whenever I asked them to do anything, or at least most of them. One seemed a bit confused. Were you able to copy my power?" "Yeah, let me try one more experiment. Sit down and let me touch you again please." This time it didn''t even seem to occur to her to think about it. Way, way too trusting of strange men in the back of her store. "Copy Regeneration"
Would you like to copy the ability {Regeneration}?
Without giving her a chance to question what I was up to I said yes. And blacked out again. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ It was past 7pm when I woke the next time. I was exhausted but convinced it was worth it. Just taking powers without offering anything in return would have led to a slippery slope. And she seemed the type who could use {Regeneration} a lot. I gave her my cell number and first name but nothing else while I called a cab. I was pretty much done for the day since my head was pounding. At home I dragged the dog out, explained if she peed fast she would get a treat, got her the treat, a granola bar for me, and then went to bed. It wasn''t even 8pm but I couldn''t imagine getting anything else done until I''d slept at least 8-10 hours Just before sleeping I checked my Character Window. [td colspan="4"]Title - Polyglot I[/td][td colspan="4"]Titles available: Slightly Masochistic, Not So Slightly Masochistic, Moderately Masochistic, Seriously Masochistic, Polyglot I[/td]
ClassExplorerLevel0
EXP70Next Level EXP1000
HP190/200MP230/245
Physical Energy240/250Mental Energy30/570
Psi280/300KI210/210
HP Regen3.2/minMP Regen0.25/min
PE Regen0.25/minME Regen0.57/min
Psi Regen0.3/minKI Regen0.21/min
Agility16/16Hand-Eye10/10
Intelligence28/30Luck6/6
Mental Stamina1/57Physical Stamina24/25
Strength21/21Vitality19/20
Wisdom23/24.5Willpower20.5/21
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Author''s note: Sorry, this took longer than usual for various silly reasons. One of which was creating spreadsheets to calculate the advanced stats as they changed. Meh. 17) "Kill with a borrowed sword" Tuesday, September 15th, 2015 A bit after 7am a massive headache woke me from a deep sleep. I was rolling around clutching my head and trying to read the window that popped up as soon as my eyes opened. The pain from my arm was already only a dull ache spread over my body so it was healing well.
Due to your actions you have gained a Resistance. Psi Resistance has reached 1%.
As soon as that faded the next popped up.
You have unlocked two types of Resistances. All Resistances are now shown on the Resistance Window.
Obviously the first step in figuring out what the hell happened was saying: "Resistances Window"
Mental
FearN/A
Forced Mental StatesN/A
InsanityN/A
SleepN/A
Physical
ColdN/A
ElectricalN/A
Heat12
LightN/A
Pain32%
Special
KIN/A
MagicN/A
Psi1%
Nothing in those windows really explained just why I got the Psi resistance though. As I got used to yet another headache I noticed the dog staring at me in the barely lit room. Making eye contact with her was usually a mistake since it got her worked up. This time it was a mistake in a different way. Images of her peeing outside by the no-parking sign flooded in one after another. Occasionally I''d be standing beside her holding treats in the image, other images had me following along like a good owner as she started marking the lawns all the way down the block. ... It occurred to me that I should have thought exactly what it meant when it said 1 pet was part of the Explorer class. "Pet Window", "Pet Character Window" [/tr]
NameNilla aka Vanilla PooLevel0
HP30/30MP10/10
Physical Energy50/50Mental Energy10/10
Psi2/10KI20/20
HP Regen0.03/minMP Regen0.01/min
PE Regen0.05/minME Regen0.07/min
Psi Regen0.01/minKI Regen0.02/min
Title
Agility4/4Hand-Eye2/2
Intelligence1/1Luck8/8
Mental Stamina7/7Physical Stamina5/5
Strength2/2Vitality3/3
Wisdom1/1Willpower9/9
Charisma10/10
Titles available: Owner of Food Slave
There were too many things to comment on but I couldn''t resist blurting out one. "OI! Why the fuck do you have Charisma and I don''t?" I''d never used OI before but it felt strangely appropriate for the dog''s weird stats. The Intelligence of 1 and Willpower of 9 explained too many things to count but her having a stat I didn''t was kind of depressing. I needed to find a way to unlock it sometime, maybe wearing something other than white T-shirts and brown pants every single day might help. The next two questions were obvious. "Pet Powers Window"
RPG Growth Projective Telepathy - Mammals
She had the exact same skills as me, which explained how she was sending me images. I started play fighting her with one hand since she hadn''t actually stopped doing that. "Pet Skills Window"
{Acting} (Novice, Passive) EXP 0.5% {Climbing} (Novice, Passive) EXP: 4.6%. {Dodging} (Novice, Active) EXP: 1.7%. {Hiding} (Novice, Active) EXP: 3.2%. {Identification} (Novice, Active) EXP: 0.1%. {Jumping} (Novice, Passive) EXP: 73.3%. {Knife Fighting} (Novice, Passive) EXP: 0.1%. {Mapping} (Novice, Active) EXP: 0.1% {Memorization} (Novice, Passive) EXP: 0.2%. {Pain Tolerance} (Novice, Passive) EXP: 1.3%. {Running} (Novice, Passive) EXP: 3.9%. {Sense Bloodlust} (Novice, Passive) EXP: 0.3%. {Sneaking} (Novice, Active) EXP: 9.6%. {Swimming} (Novice, Passive) EXP: 0.1%. {Unarmed Throws} (Novice, Active) EXP: 0.1%. {Walking} (Novice, Passive) EXP: 89.5%.
It was interesting that she had all my skills, and even skills like Unarmed Throws and Knife Fighting were copied over at 0.1% instead of 0.0%. My Unarmed Throws was 0.0%, so how could she have a higher one? That was a more than a bit confusing. I took her out and let her pee before heading back to bed. I wasn''t that tired anymore but I had felt strangely unsettled ever since I''d absorbed the new power. I preferred to get a few more hours of rest before getting ready for work, in the hopes the new power would feel more natural. And I felt lazy after 16 days of weirdness. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Woke up around 11am and started the morning routine. The dog followed me around all excited but didn''t send any new messages. I didn''t use the Telepathy either, just voice commands, but overall I was feeling a bit better than earlier. Every day seemed to bring new questions, new windows, and new experiences to the point I was ignoring most of what was happening in the world because I didn''t have time. I did browse a bit of news from a few sites but it was pure chaos. Fights between power users were escalating, groups were forming defense pacts, others were being supported/protected by their governments, and there were even charges of governmental and commercial spying using powers. New businesses were opening up like Teleportation Delivery, and Earth Golem Construction Services. There were questionable ones offering talking to dead relatives and new strange porn sites. I decided to take a mental break from it all until work was done for the day. It had reached the point where even my dog was affected by these powers. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ When I was finished my second shift at 1am and leaving work I was much calmer and ready to deal with things. I found my power to be fascinating even if the constant pain was annoying it was easily the coolest thing that ever happened to my inner child. My left arm felt healed almost entirely. Two full days and a bit was the equivalent of over 30 days of healing thanks to the {Regeneration} ability. By Thursday it would be more than 8 weeks and I could easily remove the cast. I had 14 hours until the quest ended and I wasn''t tired after sleeping so long the night before so I decided to do a spiral search around my house before bed. Starting my search with a light jog I went northwest towards where I had met the construction worker the other day. Passing through the bar and downtown business area didn''t I didn''t feel any Resonance but I did feel some drunken bloodlust. At the construction site there was nothing much new. A bit more pavement was ripped up at one end and a pile of concrete sewer sections had been added but that was it. Heading to the east I jogged past the stores I had bought junk food the first night. Things had changed a lot since then. Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation. That first night I only had the {Walking} skill, everything was confusing and extremely painful which made it impossible to concentrate. My Mental Stamina must have been somewhere around 10 or 11 back then since it crushed my mind back then. Now it was close to 6 times that... but gaining a new power had still knocked me off my feet. I turned south a bit past where I bought my Frosted Cinnamon roll that night. A block later I felt it. The massive bloodlust from the construction worker. Having felt it several times now it felt as individualized as a fingerprint, I was sure I would never mistake it for someone else''s. The good thing was that my {Sense Bloodlust} skill let me sense him at least 2-3 times the range he could sense me. The direction was south southeast, so I stopped heading south and went east a block. My night vision was poor in my left eye but as I stood there staring south on the new street I finally spotted someone standing mostly still. It was them occasionally pacing back and forth that helped me spot him. He was about twice the range of the Resonance away from me. And I decided to try something I''d thought briefly about when circling the mall the other day. If I could somehow create a skill that let me feel Resonance at a longer range than normal I could spot other power users before they could track me. Seeing the Psi stat made me realize that I''d had a psychic power from near the start, after all how else could I sense bloodlust from people I couldn''t see? My skills weren''t limited to just controlling my body better or mental constructs of maps. I activated my {Sneaking} and {Hiding} skills and slowly moved closer. I stopped about 100 feet outside the Resonance range limit and sat in the shadow of a car. I''d created {Sense Bloodlust} without trying, or perhaps it would be better to say it was created without my effort. So this was my first time trying to reach out or feel things beyond my default range deliberately. A few minutes of trying later I still had no feeling of Resonance but I did pick up another bloodlust beyond the construction worker. It wasn''t that it had been hidden, more that it was someone talking normally behind someone shouting. It also didn''t feel particularly directed at me, more at everything in general. It was just barely in my range which meant it was just beyond Resonance range past my target. That gave me a weird sense of not being the only stalker there. I felt a bit like I was being paranoid but still my first thought was maybe my target was already being tracked by the 4th power user. The one who likely burned his house down the other week. I couldn''t see anyone standing on the street at my extreme sensing range. But it was entirely possible that I just missed them in the dark. There were 2 parked cars there so it was also possible that the fire starter was tailing him with a car. All those thoughts weren''t really helping pick up Resonance so after acknowledging each idea I pushed it away and tried to get calm. Since reaching out hadn''t worked I tried instead to imagine Resonance as a giant splash in the middle of a pond and I was sitting at the edge feeling the diminishing waves with my hand in the pool.
Due to your actions you have gained a Skill. The skill {Increase Mental Sensing} (Novice, Active) EXP: 0.2%, has been created. You have gained 1 Intelligence. You have gained 1 Mental Stamina.
"Help Increase Mental Sensing"
{Increase Mental Sensing} Novice - User''s mind falls into a mental state that detects mental phenomena at a 5% longer range, must be stationary. Beginner - User''s mind falls into a mental state that detects mental phenomena at a 10% longer range, can move slowly.
I''d gained the skill I needed, but I wasn''t sure what to do next. For some reason he was staying in place and the other person seemed to be staying, presumably watching him. It wasn''t until I started trying to think of his motivation that I realized he was almost exactly at the point where he attacked me the first time. Maybe he thought I jog through that area regularly at night and had been trying to ambush me? What was funny was I only lived a few blocks away to the west. If he had went even a half mile that way he might have felt the Resonance at some point or another. I really didn''t want to fight either of them hand to hand. Even if I was now stronger than the average 46 year old guy I still wasn''t super strong or had fighting abilities. But letting the two of them accidentally find my house would be a disaster. After thinking about it a bit and watching him pace the answer was obvious. The construction worker was confusing me with the fire starter. If he found that person he''d definitely start a fight. If they fought then I was better off no matter how it ended. The fire starter seemed angry at the world so I doubted he was planning on being my new best friend. The only question was how to arrange it. If I run past the construction dude he''ll attack. If I circle 180 degrees and come up behind the fire dude he''ll likely reverse past me and away, attack, or try and go on a cross street while the construction worker noticed nothing. I decided to come in at an angle. I''d head east and then approach my target from the east while heading south when possible. If I was lucky the construction worker would head south to cut me off instead of directly east where I had just been. The fire starter was over a block south of my target so he wouldn''t feel me until he''d already seen the construction worker running full tilt at him. It only took a few minutes to get to the starting point. A few seconds of deep breaths to calm my nerves and pump up my oxygen levels and I was on my way. Just before I expected to reach Resonance range I switched to the best speed I could run at. Cutting across a lawn I felt the target to my west. It was impossible to pinpoint him but I didn''t think he had moved. I started south down a street parallel to him at full tilt. Happily no one was outside walking but I did pass one car driving where the driver gave me a funny look. Less than 10 seconds later I felt the 2nd Resonance and had to assume he felt me. I could feel the construction worker to my northwest, it seemed he''d decided to cut me off. But by then he was closer to the other guy than me. The only question was would the fire starter run or fight. In my theory he''d been stalking the construction worker for a while, so he was cautious. But the dude was also angry as hell, I could feel the bloodlust pouring off him. I kept running south, passing the point where the fire starter was directly west of me. The first sound of grinding metal and breaking glass echoed across width of the block. I knew it was impossible but I had a mental image of a car being tossed at the fire starter. The first explosion boomed out just a few heartbeats later. I could have turned west and come up right behind them but I said ''screw that'' to myself and kept going for another block south, then turned. It was a solid minute or after the start of the fight before I got to a viewing spot south of them. By that time I could see flames rising from a dozen different spots, cars, front lawns, even hydro poles. The two of them were tossing things back and forth. One was tossing what looked like basketball fireballs while the other had demolished cars along the street and driveways to toss doors, hoods and even a couple engines. I slowly backed up. The scale of destruction was beyond anything I''d seen outside of movies. Both them were too absorbed it seemed to notice the first sirens. We were only four blocks from the police station and the fire station that served the downtown. Maybe the sounds of the explosions had messed with their hearing. I kept backing away. Within minutes the first two police cars had boxed them in. Cutting across a section of the bike path I used it to stay off the streets and take a long loop around to my house. Just before I made it home a window opened twice with only a short pause between openings.
Your quest ''Capture Your Enemies'' was successfully completed. You have gained +1 to all basic stats. You have gained 500 EXP.
Your quest ''Capture Your Enemies'' was successfully completed. You have gained +1 to all basic stats. You have gained 500 EXP.
I''d done my bad deed of the day, or helped the police catch two dangerous criminals. One or maybe both of those things. I''d hit level 1 with another window but I ignored that. I was feeling a bit guilty about what I had done and wasn''t in the mood to celebrate leveling up. I took out the dog, ate a snack, then headed to bed. Even if I didn''t work on skills much today I felt like I''d accomplished something. And I felt a tiny bit safer. I had no desire to die anytime soon. Using my new power for the first time I told the dog to sleep when she started making a pillow/blanket fortress, checked my skills for the first time in a bit, and went to sleep.
{Acting} (Novice, Passive) EXP 43.1% {Climbing} (Beginner, Passive) EXP: 7.9%. {Dodging} (Novice, Active) EXP: 8.8%. {Hiding} (Advanced, Active) EXP: 14.4%. {Identification} (Novice, Active) EXP: 6.9%. {Increase Mental Sensing} (Novice, Passive) EXP: 3.5% {Jumping} (Beginner, Passive) EXP: 4.7%. {Knife Fighting} (Beginner, Passive) EXP: 2.7%. {Mapping} (Intermediate, Active) EXP: 35.1%. {Memorization} (Intermediate, Passive) EXP: 58.5%. {Pain Tolerance} (Master, Passive) EXP: 23.2%. {Running} (Advanced, Passive) EXP: 78.0%. {Sense Bloodlust} (Master, Passive) EXP: 41.9%. {Sneaking} (Advanced, Active) EXP: 29.4%. {Swimming} (Beginner, Passive) EXP: 3.2%. {Unarmed Throws} (Novice, Active) EXP: 0.0%. {Walking} (Master, Passive) EXP: 24.3%.
18) Doggie Training Days Part 1 Wednesday, September 16th, 2015 I woke up around 10am, the dog was a bit restless. As soon as my eyes opened she started beaming images of going outside to pee in. I hit her snooze button by grabbing her and snuggling, that bought me another hour of sleep. A bit after 11 we got up, I took her outside, the weather was perfect for doing almost anything. I made breakfast and relaxed while pulling up the regional and provincial news sites. After the last night''s stress I felt much more secure. The first question to answer was how did it end, and should I really feel relaxed. There was a small mention of the fight on several news outlets but not many details. There was a noon regional TV news broadcast so I hoped for more there. In the meantime I started sorting what I would do if they were in jail or hospital. Sorting out where I stood was the first step in planning for the day. "Character Window"
ClassExplorerLevel1
EXP1080Next Level EXP2000
HP220/220MP265/265
Physical Energy270/270Mental Energy600/600
Psi330/330KI230/230
HP Regen3.52/minMP Regen0.27/min
PE Regen0.27/minME Regen0.6/min
Psi Regen0.33/minKI Regen0.23/min
Title
Agility18/18Hand-Eye12/12
Intelligence33/33Luck8/8
Mental Stamina60/60Physical Stamina27/27
Strength23/23Vitality22/22
Wisdom26.5/26.5Willpower21.5/21.5
Titles available: Slightly Masochistic, Not So Slightly Masochistic, Moderately Masochistic, Seriously Masochistic, Polyglot I
Looking at the window the things that stood out to me at the time was how low my HPs were and how much Mental Stamina I had. Raising my HPs likely meant hard grueling training...which wasn''t on the menu for the day. Lots of Mental Stamina though meant I could learn a bunch of skills, and I should take the time even if it would mean some headaches. Provided I didn''t drive my Mental Stamina too low the headaches could be tolerated. I still had 4 language books I hadn''t touched, they were fairly easy stat gains if I used them. The cost would be 4*15 for 60 though, so I''d either need a nap or split them over 2 days. The regional news broadcast was starting around that time so I settled down to watch it. The leading story was the fight and a news conference with the city''s Police Chief. It was a bit anticlimactic since the police weren''t releasing too many details. What they did state was: 1) that two adult males, names withheld for now, were arrested using their powers to battle a few blocks from the police stations, both were residents of nearby towns 2) that one had a fire related power and surrendered peacefully, 3) the other resisted arrest and was in hospital for non-life-threatening gunshot wounds, 4) Charges of assault, destruction of property, and others were likely forthcoming. Perhaps attempted murder. An arson incident was being reopened at the request of one of the accused, 5) The provinces SIU would be investigating since shots were fired by police officers. There was no mention of me or my part in starting the fight. Perhaps neither of the two were cooperating. With them in jail it was time to grind a bit. And since I now knew that the dog could grind, and her stats were low, then I decided to apply a bit of tough love while I relaxed a bit. Totally not revenge for waking me early, or the pain the previous day, or her having Charisma, or... okay it was a bit of revenge but should also be useful in the future! I needed to grind {Increase Mental Sensing}, which meant using the one easy going victim I knew of. I don''t like writing real names in this journal since someone might read it, but instead of calling her Mammal Telepathy Girl I''ll call her Crystal. So I texted Crystal and found out she was working 1-9. That gave me almost 8 hours, minus time to get there, to grind increasing my range at detecting other power users. And if there was a way to increase it, there should be a way to decrease how far they can detect me. If I could detect them a mile or more away, and they couldn''t detect me beyond say 50 feet, then that was easily the greatest way to improve my future safety. I didn''t know if those ranges were realistic, but I had no doubt I could get a skill to lower the range they detected me, it was just a matter of imagining the right method while near Crystal. It took a bit to make a list of what I needed, so it was almost 1pm before I started packing stuff up in an old backpack. I packed several poop bags, a couple plastic bags, a couple sticks from the basement, an old towel, two full thermoses, some dog food and treats, 2 small saucers, and the books on Mandarin and Arabic, and finally a few granola bars for myself. Grabbing the books on Japanese and Spanish we headed out. First stop was dropping them at the library while the dog was tied outside for 30 seconds. The step after that was circling the block until the dog pooped so that I could toss the poop bags in the city maintained garbage bins there, then we headed out to the south mall. The walk was a good 30 minutes if by myself at a very fast pace. With the dog we did it in a bit over an hour with only 12 pee stops. The last 10 seemed to be just to pee air or something since the ground wasn''t wet. About a block from the nearest end of the mall I could feel the resonance from Crystal, checked if I was inside the range she could feel me, and after confirming that I and sat down and setup training camp #1. First was a saucer with a bit of water for the dog. I fed her a bit of food and then she curled up in my lap to recover from the much longer walk than usual. The first priority was getting the new skill. I decided to try imagining a pool of water again. In it Crystal and I were points of large rocks with waves spreading out in circles from us. I tried imagining the rings of waves coming from me as smaller and dying off as they spread. A good 30 minutes later I had no new skill. I spent another 10 minutes thinking about different ideas before smartening up and using my cell to browse about stealth technology. There were a bunch of different methods used and theorized to be possible. Most of them weren''t too helpful right away like changing the material I was made of didn''t make sense. However, the idea of changing the cross-section my mind showed to the world gave me two ideas. One of which felt dangerous though. Instead of imagining myself as a big rock in the pool, I imagined the rock sinking until only a bit of the rock was above water. The idea of shrinking the rock instead felt dangerous, it kept giving me images of my head being compressed by a car crusher. It might be doable that way but the idea of my mind being shrunk or compressed didn''t seem the path to go. About 15minutes later as the dog was starting to stir the sunken rock image paid off.
Due to your actions you have gained a Skill. The skill {Decrease Mental Presence} (Novice, Passive) EXP: 1.6%, has been created. You have gained 1 Intelligence. You have gained 1 Mental Stamina.
The usual headache wasn''t particularly bad now that my Mental Stamina was so high. The interesting part was that {Increase Mental Sensing} was Active but this was Passive. But both skills had been created almost the same way. There was no obvious reason why they should be different other than I was stressed when making the Active skill and needed it right away. Which lead to a question to sort later, could I somehow change {Increase Mental Sensing} to a Passive skill? That would be much more useful. I had a lot I wanted to get done that day but if I could modify my skills that would help a lot in the future. Since in theory they were all mental constructs created by my power I didn''t see why I couldn''t do it. For the time though I''d spent an hour sitting in one spot in a residential area, and the local schools were out at 3:15. I didn''t need some housewife calling the cops to talk to the suspicious old guy so I decided to move to camp #2. Stolen novel; please report. I checked the help on the {Decrease Mental Presence} while moving to the new spot along the edge of the mall''s parking lot. There was one gravel border left over from construction a few years earlier so it was my next camp.
{Decrease Mental Presence} Novice - User''s mind falls into a mental state that reduces mental presence by 5%, must be stationary. Beginner - User''s mind falls into a mental state that reduces mental presence by 10%, can move slowly.
After giving the dog a bit of water and food again I had her start sprinting to fetch various objects I projected images of to her, like a crushed paper coffee cup, small twigs, and other things she''d find interesting. Meanwhile I sat still and let the {Decrease Mental Presence} gain EXP. It didn''t take long to run through her physical energy, and for my skill to level up. A bit after she was panting and lying on the ground I got the level up notice.
Through use of the skill {Decrease Mental Presence} it has reached Beginner level. {Decrease Mental Presence} (Beginner, Passive) EXP: 0.8%. You have gained 0.5 Wisdom. You have gained 0.25 Willpower. You have gained 1 Mental Stamina.
Since I could move from now on I let the dog rest while I scooped a bunch of small gravel into the plastic bags I''d brought. Setting the bags down beside her I started making a small shelter for her to nap in. I should have made it earlier but had forgotten when thinking about how to hide my Resonance. It was basically a simple lean-to with an old blanket, 2 blocks of wood, and a few small rocks, but it would give her some shade to rest in. The shelter came with two surprises. The first was the usual large blue window in front of me.
Due to your actions you have gained a Skill. The skill {Will Crafting} (Novice, Passive) EXP: 7.8%, has been created. You have gained 1 Intelligence. You have gained 1 Mental Stamina.
The second was a small window I could see through that which was floating above the lean-to.
Temporary Makeshift Pet Shade. +1 to all of Pet''s Regens. -6 Psi/min to Creator.
I''d created a new skill and a temporary item that traded my Psi for +1 to all Nilla''s 6 regeneration rates. "Help Will Crafting"
{Will Crafting} Novice - User can create and maintain 1 item with his power. Requires 20 Willpower to enforce upon the world. Beginner - User can create and maintain 2 items with his power. Requires 30 Willpower to enforce upon the world.
Which wasn''t terribly helpful since it explain limits other than the numbers. The maintain word though seemed to imply that I couldn''t craft a few hundred health potions and sell them on the internet for example. That was the first example that came to mind since I''d spent a fair bit beyond my budget since gaining this power. The ''enforce upon the world'' line I''d seen in the help of my 2 Master skills as being needed at the Grandmaster level. I hadn''t felt anything special, just the normal headache, a moment earlier when the skill was created so the Willpower part was a bit confusing. It was worth testing and working on but with me maintaining the 1 shade for now I couldn''t test anything. I was down 23 Mental Stamina out of 60, which meant it wasn''t a good idea to spend 30 to pickup the 2 languages if I still wanted to grind {Decrease Mental Presence} and {Increase Mental Sensing} today. I also had wanted to use the gravel to add a skill. Yet again too much to do and too little Mental Stamina or time to do it all. I checked the dog''s stats. She had gained 1 Intelligence, doubling that somehow. She had also gained 2 Physical Stamina and 1 Vitality from the exercise. All of which was a bit confusing since if she could gain so fast why were her stats so low? The only thing I could come up with was I''d never had time to do more than a few quick play fights and walks with her since I''d gained this RPG Growth power. Most of my time was spent training or thinking about how to deal with various problems. After letting her rest we resumed her fetching, me trying to decrease my mental presence, and since I was allowed to move I started throwing items for her to fetch plus the gravel I''d picked up. I''d toss the gravel at a nearby post while she was running. It was nearing 5pm when I got the skill I was craving since I''d seen the two others throwing their powers around the night before.
Due to your actions you have gained a Skill. The skill {Throwing} (Novice, Passive) EXP: 4.2%, has been created. You have gained 1 Hand-Eye. You have gained 1 Intelligence. You have gained 1 Mental Stamina.
If I''d had a skill that let me throw golf ball sized rocks accurately from a distance the night before I could have taken both them out myself. Neither of their powers reinforced their bodies and a few broken bones or a cracked skull would have left them on the ground for the police to easily scoop up. Not long after that {Decrease Mental Presence} leveled up to Intermediate so the range Crystal could sense me dropped by 20%. Help listed Advanced as 40% less, so it seemed to be doubling each level. I picked up a half dozen twigs, broke down the shelter and moved us to the a new spot on the other side of the mall on back corner of the lawn of an apartment building. I tried to concentrate as I carefully setup the shade for Nilla again but other than the same blue box popping up I couldn''t tell anything had happened. My Mental Stamina was down by 36 points so if there was something special it might have been lost in the general headache. The skill {Will Crafting} was at 10.6% when I checked. Intermediate {Decrease Mental Presence} was slowly increasing. A quick calculation on my cell gave me somewhere a bit after 8 before it would level up to Advanced. {Throwing} on the other hand was going up fast as I played fetch with the dog since it was still at Novice. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ A bit after 8pm and I was at Advanced {Decrease Mental Presence}, Intermediate {Throwing} and down to 15 Mental Stamina from the 60 I''d started the day with. A few people had taken peeks at me playing with the dog from apartment windows but they likely assumed I was a tenant since no cops had shown. {Decrease Mental Presence} wasn''t likely to level up anytime soon so I decided to switch for the last hour of Crystal''s shift. I texted her to tell her I was going outside her range and thanked her for her patience in having me sitting at the edge of her awareness all afternoon and evening. She asked for a favor in return. She wanted to play with Nilla the next day since she was off. I''d explained I was also training her stats along with a few pics of her fetching earlier. Help training Nilla, a victim to practice my skills on, what was there to refuse? We setup a time and I broke camp #3 down after Nilla finished drinking, peeing, and eating in that order. The last thing before heading home was to go to the edge of my awareness of Crystal''s Resonance and work on {Increase Mental Sensing} from Novice to Beginner. It didn''t take long, maybe 20 minutes and we were on our way home. Nilla was pretty tired despite the shade''s I''d made so I ended up carrying her more than halfway. A bit before 10pm we were home. I browsed for updates but there was nothing particularly new about the arrests, just restatements of the same facts. It had been a peaceful, relaxing (other than headaches), day after weeks of stress. I set my alarm for 1am and took a nap. I wanted to get one very last thing in for the day. At 1am I double checked I had enough Mental Stamina, unpacked the Mandarin book, and absorbed the language skill from it.
Due to your actions you have gained a Skill. The skill {Mandarin} (Novice, Passive) EXP: 0.0%, has been created. You have gained 1 Intelligence. You have gained 1 Mental Stamina.
Going back to bed I checked my skills a moment then crashed curled up with a still exhausted Nilla.
{Acting} (Novice, Passive) EXP 43.1% {Climbing} (Beginner, Passive) EXP: 7.9%. {Decrease Mental Presence} (Advanced, Passive) EXP: 3.4% {Dodging} (Novice, Active) EXP: 8.8%. {Hiding} (Advanced, Active) EXP: 38.1%. {Identification} (Novice, Active) EXP: 6.9%. {Increase Mental Sensing} (Beginner, Active) EXP: 28.2% {Jumping} (Beginner, Passive) EXP: 4.7%. {Knife Fighting} (Beginner, Passive) EXP: 2.7%. {Mapping} (Intermediate, Active) EXP: 37.3%. {Memorization} (Intermediate, Passive) EXP: 58.5%. {Pain Tolerance} (Master, Passive) EXP: 25.5%. {Running} (Advanced, Passive) EXP: 78.1%. {Sense Bloodlust} (Master, Passive) EXP: 46.4%. {Sneaking} (Advanced, Active) EXP: 31.3%. {Swimming} (Beginner, Passive) EXP: 3.2%. {Throwing} (Intermediate, Active) EXP: 69.5% {Unarmed Throws} (Novice, Active) EXP: 0.0%. {Walking} (Master, Passive) EXP: 27.1%. {Will Crafting} (Novice, Active) EXP: 10.6%
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Author''s Notes: I''ve been thinking I should change the description of the story and maybe the name. The story had drifted from my original idea, and while I worked in the bandaged left arm I left out most of the chuuni and insanity storyline as I went. The result of changing each chapter as I went. I kind of want to change the title to "The Rise of Empress Nilla" but I''ll think a bit more on it I believe. For those who didn''t notice I added a pic of her, from years ago while putting on her winter coat, to the main page. Fake Side Story #1 Author''s Note: This is a brief fake story set vaguely in ?Mushoku Tensei for my amusement. If you don''t like Nilla feel free to skip past since it doesn''t affect the story. It''s just something I wrote between my two shifts today. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ King Melquin sat upon his throne and looked past the summoning circle to the crowd of trash filling his throne room. The humid air was rank with perfumed oils the various nobles used instead of bathing. At the edge of the summoning circle stood the magician the King had lured to his kingdom with far too much treasure. Every time he thought of how much he''d given the strange old pervert to come serve his kingdom his headache and rage spiked high. Today was the day it would all pay off though. He had secured a great treasure that would bind the heroine they were summoning to sexual and martial slavery. The magician had painstakingly crafted the circle to only summon a beautiful female hero. With a powerful hero devoted to himself the King would be able to get rid of some of the more uselessly uptight nobles and conquer the neighboring kingdoms. "Begin the summoning," commanded the King when the magician was finished his preparations. The hired Sword King and his Saints apprentices surrounded the circle to prevent any disruptions of the ceremony as the Magician began his long chant. The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings. The circle filled with light as the Magician continued to chant. 10 seconds, 20, 30, almost a minute passed by before the circle was too bright to look directly at. With a flash from the circle that blinded everyone the chant finished. As the King''s eyes adjusted back to normal lighting he saw a small white and brown dog in the center of the circle. "You damn pervert," he yelled at the waste of a Magician who was looking happily at the dog. "Someone kill that damn thing," was the next yell from the King as his was rage unleashed on the cute dog. The Sword King pulled his sword and before the Magician could protest swung it down on the small dog who was staring up at them with a seemingly puzzled look. The sword slashed down in a blur...only to bounce off the touki the dog had raised as armor around itself. The small dog gave a last puzzled look around, jumped up and bit the balls of the Sword King through his touki and pants, and swiftly escaped from the throne room to begin her adventures. Excerpt from Rise of the Bite Empress Nilla.
For those who don''t like Nilla, the next serious Chapter, likely on Monday?, will be the last for a bit that she gets more than brief mentions. 19) Doggie Training Days Part 2 Thursday, September 17th, 2015 The dog was calm for once when I woke up just before 11am. No running around the bed, no fiercely wagging tail, or whines. Instead she was just curled up watching me. I projected an image of her outside and she was off the bed and running down the stairs before I could even reach for my clothes. That much hadn''t changed at least. As I went to take her out I checked her stats. "Pet Character Window" [/tr]
NameNilla aka Vanilla PooLevel1
HP50/50MP20/20
Physical Energy80/80Mental Energy80/80
Psi30/30KI30/30
HP Regen0.05/minMP Regen0.02/min
PE Regen0.08/minME Regen0.08/min
Psi Regen0.03/minKI Regen0.03/min
Title
Agility5/5Hand-Eye3/3
Intelligence3/3Luck8/8
Mental Stamina8/8Physical Stamina8/8
Strength3/3Vitality5/5
Wisdom2/2Willpower10/10
Charisma10/10
Titles available: Owner of Food Slave
She had gained a few points in almost every stats. The two that stood out though were her Intelligence tripling to 3, and her Wisdom doubling to 2. Both were still low compared to me but I wondered what her limits were. After I took her out I texted Crystal a time and place. It was 2pm at the edge of the bush I''d trained in before. There was a small piece of city property that used to be made into a small skating rink each winter when I was a child. Now it''s just a small fenced in lot alongside the bike path. Basically the street went downhill to dead-end at small park, past that was the bike path that ran along a creek, then on the far side of the creek the rocky outcrops sloped up a good 30 feet. The rocks stepped up in 2 to 3 foot levels similar to the side of a pyramid so there wasn''t any climbing challenge even for kids but it was a fun area for them to play in. First thing though was preparing a pack again. I put in everything the same as last time except for a couple changes. This time the shade would be two old blankets with no sticks. And I brought a bit more food so I could share. After packing I still had an hour and a half left before meeting up. I''d left that on purpose so I could start researching things I hadn''t had much time to look at before. I tried looking for overviews and scientific reports on the powers first. There was very little useful hits on the searches at first. Most of it was guesses or bits and pieces of information. It wasn''t until I found a volunteer site a few pages down in the searches that I hit gold. The site was just a few days old and had been born from a blog that started the same day I got my power. Since the blog and the following site were new they didn''t show high up in search engines but they had an amazing amount of information. The about section of the site stated that the two people running it had powers themselves. They had nicknames, Researcher and Psychicchick. They didn''t explain what Researcher''s power was, but Psychicchick''s power was able to identify people''s power using some type of clairvoyance. It didn''t say if that was her actual power, or just a byproduct of her power. The site had 3 main sections run by various volunteers. First was a daily news section that linked to various news media reports. Second was a slowly growing list of powers associated with most cities in North America, including mine. And third was a list of links to scientific research or speculation on the powers. The first was something that could be browsed endlessly since there was hundreds of additions per day in a wiki style format. There was links to articles on superhero groups forming, a few wannabe supervillain ones, and a lot of publicity seekers who tried to get multiple news outlets to cover them each day. The second section was of more interest to me though. It listed all 4 of our powers as being in the city. And listed several surrounding towns and cities with the powers of people there. A city an hour and a half west that was twice the size had 11 people with powers listed. The most worrying ones were ''Dominator'' and ''Laser''. I wasn''t likely to run into them but still those didn''t sound good. Listed for my city was ''RPG Growth'', ''Projective Telepathy - Mammals'', ''Thermal Projectile'', and ''Psi Strength Enhancement''. The first two were obvious enough and the third seemed reasonably clear. The fourth one was obviously the power of the construction worker and seemed curious. It seemed to imply his strength wasn''t physical but using psychic power to either enhance his strength. It was somewhat interesting, but since he was in hospital it wasn''t urgent. The most important part was that people could find out my power, and I could possibly look for people''s powers I wanted to buy, or trade for. Similar to how I gained Crystal''s power, except most people aren''t anywhere near as trusting as she is. The third section with all the speculation and research links looked interesting but, like the first section, it would take hours to sort through. By the time I even lightly touched on various sections of the site though it was almost 2pm and time to go. I grabbed the pack, put the leash on the dog and made my way to the park. Crystal was already waiting when I got there. The plan was for her to play with the dog and using her power teach it some tricks, help it train a bit, and generally let the two of them have fun. I planned to run some of the trails through the bush and swamps beyond the park. I setup a resting shelter from the two blankets for them using the corner fence spot.
Temporary Makeshift Shade. +1 to all Regens. -6 Psi/min to Creator.
Yesterday I''d learned it only cost me when someone or something was using it. Today I wanted to test out how far away I could be before it failed. With that information I could plan different ways to use the skill. After explaining the shelter to Crystal, who seemed to accept it like the sky was blue, I started across the bridge over the creek only to be stopped by a window.
A quest has been created.
Jailbreak!
You quest is to ''Prevent the Successful Jailbreak'' between 3am and 5am Saturday, September 19th, 2015.
Rewards: 500 EXP, +1 to all Basic Stats
Failure: If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.Possible death or discovery.
You cannot refuse this quest.
...I didn''t know how to retort to a window other than WTF!?! First of all what''s with all the ''You cannot refuse this quest'' stuff, why not call it ''Demands'' not ''Quests''? Second of all, how come these quests seem to know far more than I do and have specific times? For example the first quest ended at exactly 12:34pm. Now suddenly I knew the prisoner would try to escape exactly in a 2 hour window? There was no reasonable way I could tip the police that. I mean even if I used a pay phone somewhere to call it in, when they asked ''how do you know?'' what do I say? A little blue window told me? I couldn''t imagine a lie they would believe. If I knew who he had talked to maybe I could use {Acting} to pretend to be one of them but I didn''t know anything about that. The only option seemed to be to prevent it myself. Which called for me to watch the police station or city jail if he''d been transferred. And then somehow stop him. It didn''t take more than a minute before I had a plan that worked and would let me release some of my frustration. Instead of going running and trying to get {Running} to Master, I went searching for rocks to throw. It took a while to find a decent amount but after that I setup a distance away on the rocks overlooking the park and started grinding {Decrease Mental Presence} using Crystal, and {Throwing} using trees in a distance. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ By 7pm when it was starting to get dark I had grinded {Decrease Mental Presence} to Master, and {Throwing} to near the peak of Advanced. My accuracy and distance with {Throwing} was near a non-pitcher professional baseball player level already thanks to my cheat skills. And Master level {Decrease Mental Presence} was 80% reduction in the range people could sense me. Meaning if they could sense me at 400 feet before, then now at most they could feel me at 80 feet. The help showed that Grandmaster offered 97.5%, meaning 10 feet was the max range. I did wonder if that might help hide from people like Psychicchick. If her range wasn''t infinite then it might help. If it was say planet sized, maybe 20000 miles, then Grandmaster would bring the range down to 500 miles. New York, Michigan and a few other states were inside that but most of the US where she likely lived wasn''t. All that was speculation. But if others had powers like hers I really wanted to avoid notice. To pay back Crystal for all of Nilla''s stat and skill training I offered the most valuable skill to her. "Copy Decrease Mental Presence"
Would you like to copy the ability {Decrease Mental Presence}?
After saying yes I didn''t pass out this time since I hadn''t used up much Mental Stamina just leveling a couple skills. But it did cost me 30 Mental Stamina, 3 times the normal cost to learn it myself. The universe was cruel and definitely unfair. Crystal didn''t feel a thing either this time or when I gave her {Regeneration}. I didn''t doubt the copy worked. Thinking about it, 30 Mental Stamina is twice what learning a skill from a book is. Maybe I was mentally buffering her and suffered both her and my pain? Yet more questions to try and figure out. I headed home after Crystal was gone. Even if she seemed trustworthy I still didn''t want her knowing where I lived. I still had a few trivial things to do and wanted to add a few languages for lazy stat grinding. Even if I had a super power I still needed fresh laundry for work tomorrow. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The rest of the night was fairly normal even though Nilla seemed a bit more active in playing by herself. While the laundry was running I napped a couple times, picked up German, Dutch and Arabic. Heading to bed I made my plans for the next day. Work, shop for some food for my empty fridge, work, stop an evil super villain from escaping jail. Okay, maybe he wasn''t too evil or super, but anyone who burns down other people''s houses is definitely a villain. Before I slept I checked my Character Window one last time. It wasn''t perhaps the most productive day, but I had new questions, a site with possible answers, and a chance to let off some steam tomorrow on the person who ultimately made the construction worker a loose cannon who harassed me. "Character Window"
ClassExplorerLevel1
EXP1510Next Level EXP2000
HP220/220MP310/310
Physical Energy270/270Mental Energy386/770
Psi376/390KI230/230
HP Regen3.52/minMP Regen0.31/min
PE Regen0.27/minME Regen0.77/min
Psi Regen0.39/minKI Regen0.23/min
Title: Polyglot I
Agility18/18Hand-Eye15/16
Intelligence36/39Luck8/8
Mental Stamina13/77Physical Stamina27/27
Strength23/23Vitality22/22
Wisdom30/31Willpower22.5/22.75
Titles available: Slightly Masochistic, Not So Slightly Masochistic, Moderately Masochistic, Seriously Masochistic, Polyglot I
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Author''s Note: 1) It''s not a long chapter but there''s a lot hidden in it for the future. 2) This being released an hour into Tuesday morning teaches me not to say it would be out a specific day. I''d tried for Monday but stupidly ran my health down a bit this weekend. 3) The new description for the novel is up. The choice of a new name though is still in the air. Feel free to point out any thoughts on the new description:
Quote:The daily Litrpg journal of a fairly average 46 year old man in a world where hundreds of thousands of people suddenly have a super power. Follow him as he learns skills, runs away a lot, suffers crippling headaches, avoids reading his titles, and tries to avoid breaking his body that didn¡¯t get enough calcium and vegetables.
4) Finally, I think I''ll do more fake side stories with Nilla in other novels. I find them relaxing and they take very little time or planning. Since none are Canon you are free to skip them. I think the next one will be related to I Shall Seal the Heavens. 20) Dont let anyone see your butt at the city jail or ... it will hurt Friday, September 18th, 2015 I woke, fairly refresh, at 11:40 when my cell alarm went off. The dog was calmly waiting for me while lying on my pants. She had dragged them over to beside my head. I took that as her attempt at being subtle in wanting to go outside. After taking her outside I started breakfast while trying to plan the day. I had a 2 hour shift, then a few hours to do my shopping and eat supper, then work again until 12:30am, and the jailbreak quest started at 3am. There really wasn''t much time to train and I was still lacking one piece of information. Was the jailbreak from the police jail, or the city jail? That wasn''t a particularly hard question to answer but I needed to go slightly out of my way to check while heading shopping. The police station was about 3 blocks north of the direct route from work to the main mall. And the city jail was about 4 blocks northeast of the mall. Since I could detect the resonance from a bit more than a block currently I didn''t even have to come into view to tell which one had a person with a power in it. I was hoping the jailbreak was at the police station though. It was closer to home and I really didn''t know the area around the city jail at all. I''d went near the city jail while searching the other day for the construction worker but that didn''t gain me anything more than basic knowledge of the area. In contrast I knew every laneway and street around the station, including a lot of good hiding spots. Putting aside speculations I still had almost 2 hours to browse the site I found the previous day. First up was committing to memory all the powers of those in my province, Ontario, in the second section of the web site. There was around 1400 people with powers in the province, many of them listed as being near small towns I didn''t know. Adding on that I knew most of the names of the small towns near me but not all them, then I could roughly sort which powers were near me. I wasn''t sure that helped a lot but knowing more never hurt. Apparently the powers weren''t updated regularly so some of them might be dead or have moved. Just adding 1400 power names and locations to a database once likely took a lot of time, updating it regularly was likely too much to ask when they still hadn''t finished adding in all of North America much less other continents. I wasn''t really interested in the first section''s news stories of fighting or ''superhero'' groups forming in general. I did want to search for local or regional events but that could wait a bit. The most interesting section was the FAQ in the third section, the science/research section. It was created by Researcher, one of the two owners of the site, based on what people knew or strongly guessed. It still took over an hour of skimming of reading the FAQ and some expansions of questions in separate links to get an overview. The first interesting thing was that not only was each power unique but most seemed to be linked to something in the person''s past. A made up example was used.
Quote:Take 4 different people with fire related powers. Two had their houses burned down as children, one of them with serious burns. A third was a childhood fan of a hero who could turn to flame. The fourth was an arsonist who became fascinated with fire at 19, a late age for an arsonist. The one who had his house burn down but, escaped safely, became a firefighter and recently gained the power to dampen flames, but not start them or anything else. The one who was burned as a child gained an ability to be immune to fire but nothing else. The third gained a power to cover himself safely in flame and is mostly immune to other fires. The arsonist gained a power to create fire, and change it''s color, but isn''t even slightly immune to flame.
The FAQ went on to state that each power seemed to be wish fulfillment but not consciously so. Each person they interviewed wanted the power badly, or was fascinated by it, at some point in their life. Because of that there were quite a few dark powers related to assassination, rape, theft, mind reading, stalking, peeping, etc.. On the positive side there were many people who had wanted their parents to get over a disease, or injuries, so there were a lot of variations on healing powers out there. There were psychics, martial artists, magic users, and many more that were impossible to understand with current science. Finally, everyone''s power started weak and slowly grew stronger the more they used it. What was interesting was that fighting each other seemed to raise it much faster than normal. Which gave me a theory on how my Quest and Level stuff actually worked. One I don''t want to write until I''ve finished the Quest tonight, since I should level if I''m successful, and had a bit to brood on it. Beyond that most of what I saw made sense from my experience. RPG Growth was likely picked for me based on all the games, thousands of novels, and daydreams over the years. Which lead to one question the web site couldn''t guess at answering. How did we get the power? Everyone that had contacted Researcher and Psychicchick that had any kind of detective or psychic skills was unable to find any clues or hints on it. Maybe someone who hadn''t found the web site had a clue but hadn''t released it. The two of them, plus their volunteers, had browsed dozens of theories given out by various people with powers in interviews but nothing stood out as useful. Most people with a power were no more reliable at guessing than my coworkers who had guessed God, Satan, aliens, the CIA, vaccinations, and growth hormones in animal feed so far. Plenty of religions, special interest groups, random celebrities were talking out their asses on TV at how they had the absolute answer. Which made me even less interested in the news media section of the site. I''d run out of time so I grabbed the 4 books to return to the library and headed off to work. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Work was boring and over fast. I thought of doing at least one set of the strength raising circuit but time was tight. If I hadn''t been running late I could have dropped the library books off on the way to work, but running late hadn''t changed upon getting a power. On the way home I dropped off the 4 books, picked up Hindi, Italian, Korean and Portuguese, dropped those 4 at home and headed to the mall. I picked a route that passed about a block away from the police station and sure enough the police weren''t kind enough to jail the fire guy near me. I still didn''t know his name since I didn''t read up after they released the two names so I''ll call him Arsonboy from now on. That leaves Asshat as my nickname for the construction worker. I really didn''t like how they had disrupted my life. It had already gotten complicated and painful enough with just gaining the power. Passing the station I kept heading northeast past the mall. Just under two blocks I felt the Resonance from the direction of the City Jail. Considering how much I had decreased my presence I decided to walk past it and up a side street. What was interesting was the Resonance felt a bit distinct. I hadn''t noticed in any of the previous adrenaline filled interactions with the two but after being near Crystal for hours I could feel that each Resonance was somewhat unique. I couldn''t compare it to how distinct someone looked or sounded but it did feel different somehow. It was worth considering later if I could tell people apart from a distance or not. The jail was at the roughly southeast corner of an irregular shaped block. The north and west sides had a row of trees with houses beyond, the east side was a minor side street, and the south side was a main street running roughly west to north north east. It was fenced in, maybe 100 beds and I''d guessed would count as a low security prison serving mainly the regional courthouse. I didn''t think Arsonboy would have any trouble burning his way out through a wall and the wire fence if he wasn''t being watched. The problem for me was all the cameras. There would be dead spots created by buildings nearby but if I wanted to be close to react to the jailbreak then I''d risk being filmed even with {Hiding} helping mark things. As I walked by {Hiding} was showing me dead or low coverage areas. But that didn''t mean that he would break out in my direction. If I was on the east behind a building there''s no reason he couldn''t break out to the northwest through the trees into the residential area. I turned down the side street leading north away from the mall. I wasn''t particularly slow, or acting weird, but I was memorizing everything I saw to make it easier that night. The street turned a bit farther in so I wasn''t in view of the jail anymore. At that point I circled and headed to the mall. The side trip had taken a good thirty minutes of my limited time. I hit the mall, grabbed a few things I needed like latex gloves, and paper towel, then I hit the grocery store. A freezers worth of frozen dinners, chicken burgers, hamburgers, and various other items were quickly picked up and I was on my way home in a cab. I dumped it all in the fridge and freezer, took the dog for a quick walk, ate a frozen dinner, and was off to work again. I''d barely worked in everything I''d needed. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Work went smooth. People were discussing Arsonboy vs. Asshat and other stuff so it was hard not to throw in a few nasty remarks about the two. But resisting temptation is a virtue or something. I was off like a shot to home at 12:45am and Home by 1am. I had 2 hours to grab a snack, prepare a plan and be in place. My skill set was fairly limited though so there wasn''t much to plan. "Skills Window"
{Acting} (Novice, Passive) EXP 58.2% The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.{Climbing} (Beginner, Passive) EXP: 7.9%. {Decrease Mental Presence} (Master, Passive) EXP: 46.0% {Dodging} (Novice, Active) EXP: 8.8%. {Hiding} (Advanced, Active) EXP: 43.7%. {Identification} (Novice, Active) EXP: 7.6%. {Increase Mental Sensing} (Beginner, Active) EXP: 32.9% {Jumping} (Beginner, Passive) EXP: 4.7%. {Knife Fighting} (Beginner, Passive) EXP: 2.7%. {Mapping} (Intermediate, Active) EXP: 40.6%. {Memorization} (Intermediate, Passive) EXP: 91.4%. {Pain Tolerance} (Master, Passive) EXP: 26.2%. {Running} (Advanced, Passive) EXP: 78.3%. {Sense Bloodlust} (Master, Passive) EXP: 48.5%. {Sneaking} (Advanced, Active) EXP: 36.8%. {Swimming} (Beginner, Passive) EXP: 3.2%. {Throwing} (Advanced, Active) EXP: 94.4% {Unarmed Throws} (Novice, Active) EXP: 0.0%. {Walking} (Master, Passive) EXP: 34.8%. {Will Crafting} (Novice, Active) EXP: 17.3%
My only distance attack was {Throwing} but it was at a level where I was very accurate and if I was careful it couldn''t be traced back to me. The one regret I had was that I had a ton of Magic, KI and Psi but no abilities that used them other than talking to mammals. At no point had I suddenly felt KI rushing from my dantian or magic aching to be released so I still had no feeling or clue how to use them. I grabbed a few latex gloves, a couple sheets of paper towel, switched to some darker clothes, which was hard due to my mostly light colored clothing buying habits, and headed out. I had one last stop along the bypass. I searched along the ditch for decent rocks. Each one that seemed about half an egg''s size and roughly round I picked up with gloves and put on one sheet of paper towel. I used that to wrap it them. It was almost impossible for me to eliminate any DNA off the rocks, even if I was wearing gloves some hair or something might fall. But making it harder to find never hurt, and the less there was the more likely it would scrape off if the rock hit the ground or something. Wearing gloves was a bit risky though so I brought several pairs. The first pair I stored in a zip pocket on my jacket so I wouldn''t lose them. By the time I got to my Resonance range it was a quarter to 2am. I still had a bit over an hour so I headed east of the jail to a coffee shop that was roughly outside my sensing range. Grabbing a couple donuts I sat outside at the outer limit of my Resonance range. I wanted to grind {Increase Mental Sensing} a bit and try an experiment. There was no reason that {Increase Mental Sensing} had to be an Active skill when {Decrease Mental Presence} was a Passive. Since skills were some kind of mental construct in my head I should be able to change them it seemed. Since my skill was RPG Growth then shouldn''t I be able to grow the skill any way I wanted? I wasn''t sure if I was trying to convince myself that or really believed it. But I felt strongly that my frame of mind interacted with my power to create skills. I decided to go with the same mental image I''d used for {Decrease Mental Presence}. My mind was represented by a mostly sunken rock whereas Arsonboy was a big rock at the edge of view making large ring shaped waves. That wasn''t too much different than when I first got {Increase Mental Sensing}. That time I imagined myself at the edge of the pool with my hand in the water feeling the waves. This time I just calmly pictured the waves washing up and occasionally over my rock. I didn''t have a hand to reach out and do anything. Instead I passively just felt the Resonance waves coming in. Slowly the waves seemed more defined, sharper. They didn''t grow larger, but I could feel them better. Weirdly I felt like the waves then suddenly grew much larger. Pulling back my mental viewpoint I looked towards my rock icon for Arsonboy''s presence only to see two other rocks creating massive waves as they rushed towards us. The extra practice from sensing them must have put me over the limit since I suddenly saw the blue window and felt the pain.
Due to your actions you have evolved a skill and it has reached Intermediate level. The skill {Increase Mental Sensing} (Intermediate, Passive) EXP: 0.7%, has been created. You have gained 0.5 Wisdom. You have gained 1 Mental Stamina.
The pain from the skill leveling woke me from the trance I''d been in. A quick, entirely reflexive, check of my stats showed I was down 13 Mental Stamina, the cost was the same as creating a skill plus leveling one. I couldn''t see who the two new Resonances belonged too from where I was almost two blocks east of the jail though. I checked my cell, and was surprised to see it was 3:57am. I''d been in that trance for roughly two hours. First things first, I moved into some shadows, pulled on a pair of gloves and started running to my preferred hiding spot a 150 feet northeast of the jail. There was a good shadow there that let me see most of the north and east side of the jail. I got there as two people stepped out of a dark green car on the side street east of the jail. It wasn''t particularly easy to see them from my angle without stepping out, but they didn''t seem at all worried about the cameras. One seemed thin, tall, and blonde, the other a bit older and even taller with dark hair. I couldn''t make out their faces from the angle other than they seemed white...maybe. They had parked at a really bad spot from my point of view. They simply stood beside the car doing nothing in full view. That wasn''t exactly suspicious and there was only occasional cars along the road south of them. But neither looked at anything other than the jail. A few minutes went by when one of the doors facing them started to glow a bit around the handle. It wasn''t hard to guess what that was. Moments later a piercing alarm was going off as the door was flung open. I grabbed a few rocks with my left, picked a favorite with my right and got ready to bean me some escaping convict points. Picturing it as a game helped release a bit of the stress of coldly targeting a person. A rock could kill if I was unlucky. By the time I was setup and ready to throw, Arsonboy was already at the fence and starting to melt it nearest to the two waiting men. I was going to try and hit him in the leg or stomach as soon as the fence was melted. I wasn''t sure if I could throw at the other two. They hadn''t ever done anything to me and even if they were helping him I wasn''t sure what to do. Maybe try and damage the car windows so they would easily be spotted/stopped by the police? The tall blonde guy stepped away from his taller friend and towards the fence just as Arsonboy was about to break through. As Arsonboy grabbed the fence to try and push and shake the melted parts to the ground, the blonde held up a hand to the sky. Lights started going around the top of the building, lighting up the yard. The hand slowly seemed to glow at first. Then small sparks came off like one of those lightning generators you see at a science exhibit. Arsonboy was busy with more melting and glances at the building where the alarm was peeling so he didn''t notice. So far no one had come out of the building. A guy slowly charging lightning. Another dumber guy holding a metal fence. And a third guy ready to do who knows what. It wasn''t a complex scenario to figure out what was happening next even if I had no clue why. The first rock was fired and took WannabeThor on the side of the jaw. I''d been aiming at the side of his upper chest facing me but I didn''t regret it. The second rock missed Arsonboy when he turned to face a shout from the building''s exit he came from. The third hit him in the ass and knocked him sprawling. The taller dark haired guy was already reacting even though the three rocks took less than four seconds to throw. A massive shockwave blasted out from him in all directions. Even if I''d thrown a rock it wouldn''t have gotten close. What was weird was he didn''t seem to care that the shockwave flipped his car one way and tossed his blonde friend into the base of the fence because of the angles. He was off and running south away from me with continuous shockwaves blasting out. When he reached the edge of the main road he cracked a hydro pole in half just by running near it. Looking at the prison, the guards rushing out, the 2 men on the ground, it was clearly time for me to go. I was off like lightning to the northeast away from town. It was a few blocks to the base of the ski hill and running up the woods along it as sirens wailed in the background. It was more than worth taking the long way around even if it meant it might be two hours before I got home. Along the way I got the notification I''d expected.
Your quest Jailbreak! was successfully completed. You have gained +1 to all basic stats. You have gained 500 EXP.
Followed by a second window.
You have reached Level 2.
The windows seemed to confirm my theory on how the quests and levels worked but I decided to try and do some internet searches to confirm my theory the next day. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ It took until almost 6:30am before I was home. I''d circled north, then northwest to near the college, then came back home. It was likely overkill, and I was exhausted, but being safe was worth every minute. I took the dog out, and slept the instant my head hit the pillow. Fake Side Story #2 Fake side story set in I Shall Seal the Heavens this time. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Meng Hao flicked his sleeves as the last of the Heaven Defying Spirit Pills flew from his cauldron into a bag. He had spent three months creating them ever since he ''gained'' the formula from another alchemist. His eyes glinted as he looked at the bag of the Cosmos. It had been almost six months since he last checked in on the Blood Mastiff. The Blood Mastiff had been slightly stirring in his sleep at that time. Pulling the blood-colored mask from the bag of the Cosmos he poured his Spiritual Sense inside. A strange expression immediately appeared on Meng Hao''s face, as though he didn''t know if he should laugh or cry. This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience. Inside the blood-colored mask he could see the Blood Mastiff had woken with its full power. However it had shrunk nearly back to its initial cute size from the start of the Blood Immortal Legacy tournament. The first shocking thing was that a white dog, with brown markings, that he had never seen was also in the bag of the Cosmos. Even more shocking was the four red and white puppies that were playing around the Blood Mastiff and white dog. Meng Hao''s eyes gleamed as he started thinking of ways to make Spirit Stones from it all. 21) 50% less Shameful Saturday, September 19th, 2015 I woke a bit after noon with the dog sleeping on top of the pillow beside my head. Trying to avoid waking her I started planning what to do before and after work. I''d had a few thoughts last night on the long tour of the city but I needed to gel them into a plan. One thing was clear, I didn''t really see most of these people with powers as anything but clowns. It wasn''t that I was smarter or stronger than them exactly. It''s that they didn''t seem to know what to do with themselves now that they had a power. The two new guys last night showed up outside a prison, low security though it may be, without an attempt to hide. Getting a power didn''t make you some superhero or supervillain. Even if you had a power that could kill anyone you can see, it wouldn''t stop a sniper, a guided missile strike, or even a simple booby trap on your car. Keeping low profile was the most basic of ideas and none of the one''s I''d met, even Crystal, seemed to get that. She mostly was low profile because she didn''t realize she had a power until the day I told her. I expected her to be on some TV show with trained animals as soon as the idea occurred to her. I was also pretty sure the lightening guy aka WannabeThor and his friend, who I''d already nicknamed Shockandrun, were trying to kill Arsonboy last night. It''s possible that WannabeThor was charging to electrify the fence after Arsonboy escaped but I doubted it. Unless he continually applied a current, or had some similar skill, it would just dissipate into the ground. But at the same time Arsonboy was clearly expecting them and escaping towards them. So he must have thought it was safe. I''d spent hours going in mental circles after the jailbreak attempt trying to figure out possibilities and still had no answers. Maybe the police had some answers by now but I doubt they were handing them out. I''d check the news later but I expected a brief section with no mention of motives. WannabeThor likely had a broken jaw and wasn''t going to be explaining things too soon. In the end the facts were simple. There were several hostile people with powers who might escape and attack. They might have more friends. Even if we were hours north of the 95% population band there was still a few hundred thousand people within a 2 hour drive, meaning 20-30 powers. Within a 4 hours drive there was over 2 million people which meant 200+ people with powers. Presumably most of them didn''t want to fight anyone. But I couldn''t rule out that whoever or whatever is behind these powers is subtly encouraging it with higher aggression levels. There''s already rewards of greater strength in your power if you fight others. And last week they added the map so you could see how many others had powers in various ranges. Checking the map took a bit of concentration but last night after I was clear I found 6 people with powers including myself. I guess the next step was double checking that. I closed my eyes and tried to visualize the map. It made my spine tingle in a way my own power didn''t. Trying to control the map wasn''t hard but it felt cold and foreign in a way I couldn''t describe. Nine. There were nine people with powers in a 50 mile radius now. Fuck the dog sleeping, I reached out and texted Crystal a warning about the situation and got an acknowledgement back. The dog was awake and unusually she seemed to be paying attention to what I was typing on my phone. I doubted she was anywhere near close to being able to read but it was definitely a sign she was getting smarter. I had memorized all 1427 powers in the province and their locations. Many of the minor towns weren''t familiar but sorting through the ones I knew were near I had a rough list of powers nearby at the time the list was made. If someone was in Toronto or on a trip somewhere while the list was made they wouldn''t show I assume so I couldn''t fully trust the list. The list I made, excluding the original 4 of us was: Lightning God, Atmospheric Pulse, Poison Fiend, Ice Hand, Shelter, Dominator, Variable Invisibility, High Speed, Time''s Timer, Healing Wind, Light Mind, Distant Viewer, Firebringer, Shadow Forger, Laser, True Light, Air''s Birth, Pathmaster, Punishing Fist, Meteor, Heart of Glass, Garden. The chances that the Lightning God power belonged to WannabeThor seemed high. And Atmospheric Pulse was likely Shockandrun. Many of the other powers weren''t very clear at all. For example Poison Fiend could mean anything from being able to create poisons, to breathing it out or even having blood that''s poisonous to others. After last night I understood that even if I thought of WannabeThor and Arsonboy as clowns their powers were still serious ones. So the obvious step seemed to be to reduce the usefulness of their powers before I saw them next. If they were determined to escape I doubted the prisons could hold them long. That was especially true if they got outside help. "Resistances Window"
Mental
FearN/A
Forced Mental StatesN/A
InsanityN/A
SleepN/A
Physical
ColdN/A
ElectricalN/A
Heat13%
LightN/A
Pain33%
Special
KIN/A
MagicN/A
Psi2%
I should have started on Heat resistance grinding as soon as I found out the arsonist actually had a fire based power but minutes later he was caught by police so I''d shelved it. The first three resistances, Fear, Forced Mental States and Insanity I had no clue how to train. I doubted scary movies or books on Cthulhu would work. Sleep resistance I could likely train by not sleeping until I got it, then staying up to grind it longer. It seemed useful in the long run but in the short run the tiredness and mental fatigue would mess with everything else. Cold, Electrical, Heat, Pain were clear enough. Light not so much. Would staying outside at the beach give it to me before I got skin cancer? KI and Magic I still had no clue with. But Psi had gone up to 2% from 1% at one point. Maybe from Nilla pestering me in my sleep? Too vague to make a serious guess at really. One that didn''t show up was Poison. With someone like Poison Fiend on the nearby list that seemed important. I went downstairs, took the dog out, made some toast and started researching poison resistance along with looking up easy sources of electricity, heat and cold to grind with. I needed something cheap, immediately available in town and could work for hours. The research led to Mithridatism, along with the fact that it''s mostly fake. Ingesting most poisons slowly over time just meant a fatal dose built up in your body. There seemed to be a few exceptions like possible resistance to snake venoms but it''s not like I had rattlesnake poison easily available. Drinking some poisonous material under the sink didn''t seem the best way to start. I needed something mild that wouldn''t send me to the hospital...and I really wanted to avoid puking up my lungs too. Searching through links took a while but eventually sent me into a detour. There were therapies designed to build immunity to allergies by slow exposure. A chance link in there lead to something that actually seemed useful. Apparently some hikers would chew parts of Poison Ivy to build an immunity to it. It was an allergic reaction but my power seemed at least somewhat amenable to how I think of things. Evolving {Increase Mental Sensing} to be a passive skill instead of active showed that. After I''d decided on getting some Poison Ivy things went fast. I memorized the look of various Poison Ivy types using {Memorization}. With that I could use {Identification} to find it in the nearby woods if it existed there. Heat, I could use my space heater. For Cold I had an ice pack for injuries over the years, all I had to do was pick up a few more so that I could rotate them through. Electricity was a bit harder, sticking a fork into a socket was a good way to wreck the socket and was a bit of an overkill. Same with a tazer stun gun if I could even find one in town. The only practical example of electrical shocks I could think of was those buy zapper lanterns you can buy. Researching them though gave an even better solution, the tennis racket type electrical bug zappers. One of the chain hardware stores sold them. So my shopping list was: 3 Ice packs, a tennis racket bug zapper, and lots of rechargeable batteries for it. If I brought some gloves and a plastic bag with me I could try to find Poison Ivy on the way back by detouring to the woods. A quick shower and I was on my way around 1:30pm. I told Nilla I would be gone for several hours which was a regular ritual, but for the first time I felt like she partially understood. I had until 8pm before I had to be at work so I had a few hours of grinding available after shopping if the Poison Ivy didn''t take long. While walking I pulled up my Character Window.
ClassExplorerLevel2
EXP2020Next Level EXP3000
HP230/230MP325/325
Physical Energy280/280Mental Energy790/790
Psi394/400KI240/240
HP Regen3.68/minMP Regen0.33/min
PE Regen0.28/minME Regen0.79/min
Psi Regen0.4/minKI Regen0.24/min
Title: Polyglot I
Agility19/19Hand-Eye17/17
Intelligence40/40Luck9/9
Mental Stamina79/79Physical Stamina28/28
Strength24/24Vitality23/23
Wisdom32.5/32.5Willpower23/23
Titles available: Slightly Masochistic, Not So Slightly Masochistic, Moderately Masochistic, Seriously Masochistic, Polyglot I
Walking along I started testing my hypothesis from the previous night. "Help Level"
Level is an indicator of your relative strength.
"Help Quest"
A task with a reward in power strength.
I''d looked briefly at the text both them before but I hadn''t paid any real attention since they seemed reasonable. But now the help on them stood out a bit. The normal definition of ''Quest'' is the search or pursuit of a goal. Like the quest for the Holy Grail, or a quest to find a killer. There might be items at the end or knowledge but they weren''t given as rewards, they were found or truths realized. The ''Help Quest'' text though mentions ''task'' and ''reward''. Meaning it''s given by someone and rewarded by someone, or maybe a system. But that meaning of Quest is similar to modern games definition of quests. The ''Help Level'' text says it is an indicator of ''relative'' strength. Similar to how a thermometer is an indicator of temperature. If my power reaches a certain level to unlock something, that had nothing to do with formal ''Levels''. It explains why I didn''t gain stat points or HP''s or anything in particular when I level unless something else happened like when Escape Capture completed and I gained a bunch of power. The scary part though was the danger the Quest system implied. One, that something was handing out quests to fight. Two, that it could possibly read our minds depending on how it knew when the construction worker had decided to capture me. And three, that others were likely getting something like Quests. Since I didn''t see a message on the site''s FAQ about Quest windows, or voices telling them things, it was likely unconscious hints. The last part was what I''d wracked my head over and extended my walk the night before. I doubted I was being given information that no other person with a power was. I think my power was just displaying it to me unlike most others. There were bound to be others with powers that let them clearly see the information. I tried to think through all the implications of that as I walked to the store and shopped. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I picked up what I needed with less than $70 for the one bag worth of stuff. It felt expensive but being able to resist various power attacks was easily worth the price. I was fairly confident it would work since Heat and Pain resistances weren''t too hard to get weeks ago. Heading to the woods I decided to browse local news. That late in the afternoon I figured they should have something about the prison jailbreak attempt by now. It was a bit awkward finding the local news on my phone since I had to browse through a few pages with one hand. If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it. The top news wasn''t the jailbreak attempt. The top news was the death of Jason Gagnon in the hospital where he was recovering from a second surgery for complications from the gunshot wounds the other day. He and one of the two Constables, Steven Couchie, were electrocuted at roughly 2:30am by assailants. One of who was believed to be in custody from the failed jailbreak attempt. The first death, and of someone who directly attacked me. I was also the one who basically swatted him. If he wasn''t shot he might have been able to fight or at least run, or even been behind bars where he was safer. It''s not like I forced him to fight the cops and get shot, but still it was hard to know what to feel. There weren''t many details beyond that since the police were keeping a lid on details. But they were asking for the public''s help in finding a person they had a security camera picture of. It was definitely the Shockandrun guy. They were also warning that people who had a power see the police for protection before more fighting broke out. I immediately texted Crystal the link then hurried towards the woods. Using {Running} I was at the woods in minutes. I started running through every small trail of the woods, jumping up on any outcroppings and scanning the area. It took an hour and a half before I found enough Poison Ivy to fill the extra bag I''d brought. There were two types spread over a small area. It was a bit tricky not to get any on my arms while pulling them up with the gloves I''d bought the other day but was going smoothly when a blue window from Nilla popped up. I didn''t even know she could do that. There were still way too many unknowns.
Explorer''s Pet ''Nilla'' wishes to add map information. Yes or No?
"Yes" The city map that I''d used {Memorization} on popped up inside a window. Near my house were two blinking dots. They were both moving southwards at either a run or a slow car''s driving speeds. One was an end of a block to the west, the other 2 ends to the east. It was obviously a grid search for Resonance. Nilla had the {Sense Bloodlust} ability but it wasn''t leveled so the only thing she might sense a few hundred feet away would be Resonance. I didn''t know she could even sense it before now but it was the only thing that made sense. I''d never felt Resonance from her so she was safe. At least I now had a clue why the Explorer Class required a pet. A question for later was what else Nilla could do. Something else occurred to me. If Jason Gagnon was dead then of the 9 powers this afternoon at least 4 were new and 2 were the ones I ran into last night likely. 5 of them were free to search for Crystal and me. I watched the map as they passed by my place and continued south while my hands kept squishing as much Poison Ivy as I could into the bag. After a bit the markers disappeared off the map and I was finished harvesting. I was about a mile southeast of my home in the woods but I headed to the nearest edge instead of directly home. I texted Crystal to close her store and head to the OPP station along the bypass. The Ontario Provincial Police had a station in town about a half mile west of the jail. It served the roads and some of the towns too small to have police stations around us. They had a lot more resources than local cops and could help her get to other cities if need me. She was reluctant since her mall would fine the company for closing early but not being dead was yet again more important than money. When texting didn''t work I switched to calling her. After a few minutes she agreed, and agreed not to mention me to the provincial police. I headed home at a fast walk after that. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I got home a bit after 5pm. First up was taking the dog out and eating as quick as possible. I quickly threw in a microwave dinner and let Nilla pee. The cold packs went into the freezer beside the one I already owned. Ordering Nilla up onto my chair I set up on the ground in my office. First would be Electricity. I unwrapped the tennis racket shaped bug zapper and put some batteries in. I turned it on and slowly reached out to touch it briefly with my other hand. ZAP! And it hurt just like I expected it to. It was worse than the static shock you get when you touch a doorknob but it didn''t seem that much more. That might have been {Pain Tolerance} and Pain Resistance though. Gritting my teeth I kept at it. Repeatedly shocking myself again and again. It wasn''t the first time but I wished my power was a bit less painful overall. After roughly 20 minutes and a few hundred shocks I got the window as my skin crawled and muscles spasmed.
Due to your actions you have gained a Resistance. Static Resistance has reached 1%. You have gained 1 Physical Stamina. You have gained 50 EXP.
I checked my Physical Stamina immediately. It was down 10 while the cap went up, 18/29. So the cost was similar to learning new skills. Likely the fact that I didn''t have much Physical Stamina was what put me down when I gained the 2nd Resistance that night 2 weeks earlier. It also meant I couldn''t gain more than 1 more Resistance without resting or I''d pass out. One other problem was the window said Static Resistance not Electrical. I pulled up the Resistances window. "Resistances Window"
Mental
FearN/A
Forced Mental StatesN/A
InsanityN/A
SleepN/A
Physical
ColdN/A
Static1%
Heat13%
LightN/A
Pain36%
Special
KIN/A
MagicN/A
Psi2%
Electrical Resistance was definitely replaced by Static. Which was more than a bit confusing but maybe my power was adapting to my thoughts again? I left it alone since an answer didn''t seem forthcoming and switched to my bag of Poison Ivy. I really, really hadn''t been looking forward to it. But an Itchy tongue and sore throat would be alleviated a lot by my pain abilities and unlocking it now would give me a chance at resisting any poisons in the future. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ And I don''t think I''ll ever describe in detail that small slice of hell other than to say itchiness is apparently different than Pain so my skill and resistance didn''t help much.
Due to your actions you have gained a Resistance. Allergy Resistance has reached 1%. You have gained 1 Physical Stamina. You have gained 50 EXP.
Again a Resistance I didn''t expect though this one made more sense since it was an allergic reaction. Kind of disappointing but it would help with my minor allergies. I still had almost 3/4 of a bag of Poison Ivy left too. The problem was it was 2 hours until work and I was down to 8/30 Physical Stamina. I couldn''t gain Cold Resistance without a nap. Or I could gain it along with a forced nap after it knocked me out. So my choices were grinding Heat, Static or Allergy. Or a nap before work. I choose the nap. I might have a run in tonight with someone so being refreshed wouldn''t hurt. I could grind after work. I set my alarm and laid down to sleep with Nilla after hiding the Poison Ivy away. Just because she''s smarter didn''t mean she''s smart yet. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Woke up from the nap with a text from Crystal waiting for me. The OPP were going to help her and in return she would be a trainer for their K9 units. They might ask her to use Resonance to track criminal power users too. That didn''t sound entirely safe but I assumed they would assign bodyguards if she was helping track as a civilian. I sent a text telling her to keep contact between us a secret and left for work. My Physical Stamina had recovered to 17/30. I had a 4 hour shift which went fairly smoothly. There was only one disruption when a few Resonances passed by a street over around 11pm. I guessed they were heading somewhere in the north since they weren''t spread out or going slowly. I couldn''t guess how many there were but one felt a bit familiar. If I had to put money on it I''d say that was Shockandrun. About a minute or two later Nilla updated my map with 7 Resonances marked in three clusters in line passing briefly through the far west side of her awareness. If Nilla''s 7 was right then they had been reinforced again. I found a quiet spot and tried to summon the what the web site called the World Power Map for a second time today. It showed 11 powers in the 50 mile area. Things were definitely heating up. The rest of the shift finished smoothly. It felt dangerous to go home but not too much. With {Decrease Mental Presence} they could drive by on either side of my block and I''d still be outside their range. Only if they drove down my side street would they feel me. If I could just level it up once more then I doubted they would feel me more than 20 feet away. I got home, took Nilla out. I wanted to make a quick snack but since it might end up in the toilet during Allergy Resistance training it didn''t make sense to eat first. First up though was gaining Cold Resistance. I went all in, grabbed 2 cold packs and stuffed them in my underwear. 15 minutes and possible frostbite later I had it.
Due to your actions you have gained a Resistance. Cold Resistance has reached 1%. You have gained 1 Physical Stamina. You have gained 50 EXP.
Physical Stamina was down to 7/31 while Physical Energy was at 200/310. Unlike Stamina the Energy regenerated at a point every 3 minutes that if I was sitting or resting. Now was the time to go absolutely nuts. I had roughly 5 hours to grind before I''d need sleep. Trying to add Sleep Resistance training in now would only leave me crippled tomorrow but was definitely another goal. So, I grabbed a fresh cold pack while returning the current 2 to the freezer. I turned on the space heat and putting my left foot almost touching the ceramic mesh. Stuck a cold pack in a place that didn''t want it. Put my right heel on the mesh of the bug zapper and used the weight of my calf to push it''s button down. That left one hand to hold the Poison Ivy bag and the other to feed it to me with a glove. I was a pain machine for 4 hours with only breaks to change ice packs or bug zapper batteries. There were two important updates though in that timeless misery. Heat Resistance, which had a head start on all but Pain Resistance, was the first to reach 99% near the end of the training time.
Due to your actions you have evolved a Resistance. Heat Resistance has become Fire Resistance. You have gained 1 Physical Stamina. You have gained 1 Vitality. You have gained 50 EXP.
The cost for that was 5 Physical Stamina, leaving me with 2/32. Not enough to upgrade another Resistance but I kept working at it for a while longer since none of the others seemed to be too close to 99%. They were all rising much slower. The second update was split into two windows and was far more gratifying.
Due to your actions you have evolved a Title. Slightly Masochistic has evolved to Obstinacy I. You have gained 10 EXP.
Due to your actions you have evolved a Title. Not So Slightly Masochistic has evolved to Obstinacy II. You have gained 10 EXP.
Help Obstinacy II told me that it allowed me to ignore 10% of pain, discomfort or distraction while focused on any task. Losing those two titles and the prospect of losing the others in the future was definitely worth it. I safely packed up everything, cleaned up the splatters around the toilet, and took Nilla out one last time before bed. Lying down I checked my Resistances one last time. "Help Resistances"
Mental
FearN/A
Forced Mental StatesN/A
InsanityN/A
SleepN/A
Physical
Allergy92%
Cold67%
Static79%
Fire0%
LightN/A
Pain46%
Special
KIN/A
MagicN/A
Psi2%
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Author''s Note: Sorry for how long this took. It''s almost twice the size of regular chapters and I kept adding in the middle. 22) Not the best day Sunday, September 20th, 2015 At 9am exactly my cell alarm woke me and Nilla. I''d slept a bit less than 6 hours, enough I''d hoped to recover to max but also hopefully not be essentially if another search went past. There was no sign I was detected which was good. It was Sunday so most people should be home and I was hoping their searches would hit the residential areas or maybe spread to the edges of the city since they didn''t find me yesterday. I lived within 200 feet away from the downtown business area. There were plenty of houses around me but I had some hopes for a peaceful day. It struck me just how much I was hoping this, hoping that. A far cry from the confidence of the other night. But ambushing a few guys in the distance in the dark with all the skills I had now was a far cry from going head to head during daylight if I was caught by surprise. I''d built my skills around stealth, and essentially information warfare. I wanted to be able to track them while they couldn''t track me. Yet another hope was that they all still had jobs. If they hadn''t quit their jobs then any with 9-5, Monday to Friday jobs would have to head back to wherever sometime tonight. If they just left a couple behind then it was sniping time again. With those dark thoughts I started up my morning routine. After days of short walks or none at all I took Nilla for a slightly longer one to the Waterfront. We passed a few people jogging and a few others walking their dogs. Most of them weren''t as calm as Nilla when passing by. Nilla had almost never barked at other dogs in the past but she had a habit of whining a bit since she wanted to go play even if they barked aggressively at her. When a rather loud terrier was going by I was able to ''feel'' Nilla talking to another dog. I''d never felt her talking to Crystal or the neighboring dogs so it was fairly new. I couldn''t quite tell what she was communicating to the other dog but the dog which was half again her size suddenly crossed to put it''s owner between it and Nilla. I''m not sure if Nilla was bullying the bigger dog or just standing up for herself. Either way the teenager owner seemed to be annoyed. Maybe he liked his dog harassing others? Or didn''t like being cut off by his dog suddenly switching sides. Anyway, at our walking speed we were long gone before he could think of an excuse to start anything. Other than that the walk was relaxing and helped clear my head of a lot of the stress I''d accumulated in the last 24 hours. I started making plans as I went. Most of the mental resistances I had no clue how to unlock. I suspected I needed to be attacked mentally before I could unlock them, similar to how Nilla''s pee begging Psi attack unlocked that. However Sleep and Light were both doable later tonight. If Monday was likely to be fairly safe then I could stay up until I unlocked Sleep Resistance and then sleep to recover. Light Resistance seemed doable at work. We had 3 tanning beds at work along with free tanning for staff. The main problem is that like any work place people gossiped. And I was easily the whitest guy on staff, one coworker a decade past had called me Casper the Unfriendly Bitch for being so white and anti-social. Most of the staff were too new to remember that, but if I tried grinding Light Resistance by taking several short tans in one day, across several people''s shifts, they would all know about it. And the chain''s policy restricted you to only tanning every second day. If we weren''t a 24 hours club I could easily set it up for myself after close but the next time we closed was Thanksgiving in early October. Even the simplest things had complications if I wanted to avoid calling attention to myself. The same as the cast on my left arm. The arm had been perfectly fine for days now but taking it off before at least 2 weeks had passed would likely be noticed. I doubted anyone was counting days but it needed to be long enough that I could claim I felt mostly okay and broke it off in annoyance. Nilla was still going strong now that her stamina and energy levels were high but I wanted to head back. We were cutting through a park when I felt the Resonance. I had longer range than Nilla due to my higher {Increase Mental Sensing} but I still couldn''t quite detect how many there were. The Resonance felt a bit strange too, in a way I couldn''t describe. The only slightly useful information was that one seemed vaguely familiar. It wasn''t Shockandrun, perhaps one of those that passed nearby while I was working last night. They seemed to be heading south but it was strangely hard to tell. The angle the Resonance was at didn''t move as fast as it should and the feeling wasn''t growing either so they weren''t heading straight for me. About 20 seconds after I felt them Nilla updated a map window for me and I could see why. They was 3 of them and they were twice as far away than I''d thought they were. I immediately pulled up Nilla''s skill list in reflex. "Pet Skills Window"
{Acting} (Novice, Passive) EXP 13.1% {Climbing} (Novice, Passive) EXP: 4.8%. {Decrease Mental Presence} (Novice, Passive) EXP: 85.7%. {Dodging} (Beginner, Active) EXP: 1.7%. {Hiding} (Novice, Active) EXP: 29.1%. {Identification} (Novice, Active) EXP: 41.3%. {Increase Mental Sensing} (Beginner, Passive) EXP: 36.8%. {Jumping} (Novice, Passive) EXP: 79.6%. {Knife Fighting} (Novice, Passive) EXP: 0.1%. {Mapping} (Novice, Active) EXP: 53.7% {Memorization} (Beginner, Passive) EXP: 20.6%. {Pain Tolerance} (Novice, Passive) EXP: 1.5%. {Running} (Novice, Passive) EXP: 64.8%. {Sense Bloodlust} (Novice, Passive) EXP: 48.4%. {Sneaking} (Novice, Active) EXP: 12.5%. {Swimming} (Novice, Passive) EXP: 0.1%. {Throwing} (Novice, Active) EXP: 0.1%. {Unarmed Throws} (Novice, Active) EXP: 0.1%. {Walking} (Novice, Passive) EXP: 89.5%. {Will Crafting} (Novice, Active) EXP: 41.6%
I wanted to comment on the fact that her freaking {Will Crafting} was higher than mine but it wasn''t the time. Pulling up her skills was definitely a brain fart on my part. I was clearly feeling Resonance at twice the previous distance and so was Nilla. So I didn''t need to look at her skills or mine, I knew it wasn''t a result of skill increases. It had been exactly a week since the World map thing was added. The most likely answer was that whoever or whatever was behind these powers was messing with us yet again and had doubled the range everyone could feel each other at. The park we were in was right beside the street they were heading south on. I''d been heading towards that road to go north and home and was less than 80 feet away. I immediately turned and ran with Nilla deeper into the park causing the few people playing near to give us a glance. They weren''t important though. I needed to get at least 160 feet from the street. My {Increase Mental Sensing} paid off again. It took them more than two minutes to get through the lights and traffic to get near the park which meant I could have walked the 160 feet. A bit of panic wasn''t a bad thing. We were in sight of the car as it drove past but I was already holding Nilla under my shirt in the shadow of a tree. {Hiding} had shown the best spot for me to watch them from while still being in view to try and see them. The car windows were tinted and only the passenger side window was down. I had a vague view of long blonde hair past the passenger but couldn''t see enough to bother using {Memorization} on the driver. The passenger though was smoking a cigarette and looking in my direction. I got a clear view of his face and was able to sort his Resonance out a bit from the blur. I''d have preferred to see him walking by himself to get a better memory of how he looked in total, and his solo Resonance, but beggars can''t be choosers. He wasn''t the slightly familiar one from last night. Either the driver or the passenger was one of those that went past work then. I waited until they were a good block past, heading towards Crystal''s old workplace, behind rushing home. My place wasn''t as safe as yesterday now that their sensing range was doubled. Before they had to drive exactly by my house on the cross street. Now if they were at the intersection on either side of me they would be able to feel me. I could grind {Decrease Mental Presence} but it was already at Master level and would take at least 5 hours to reach Grandmaster based on my training with Crystal the other day. And training at max distance seemed far less useful than being inside the other person''s sensing range when trying to gain EXP in the skill. Which meant I had to be within 160 feet for 5 hours or roughly around 10+ hours of being within 800 feet. I texted Crystal to see where she was while I hurried home. I didn''t bother taking off my shoes when I got home in case I needed to hurry outside and get some distance from a searchers path. Four slices of toast later there was still no reply from Crystal so I set up a Resistance grinding station again. I didn''t want to be nauseas so I skipped the Poison Ivy. And I couldn''t take off my shoes so I couldn''t do the heater or bug zapper the same as early this morning. I double checked my Resistances with "Resistances Window".
Mental
FearN/A
Forced Mental StatesN/A
InsanityN/A
SleepN/A
Physical
Allergy92%
Cold67%
Static79%
Fire0%
LightN/A
Pain46%
Special
KIN/A
MagicN/A
Psi2%
I rolled up my left pant leg and put the space heater right against the skin before turning it on. Cold packs in the underwear again. But the bug zapper was held in my right while the left was being zapped. An hour later there was still no reply from Crystal but the more important thing was Fire Resistance hadn''t moved even slightly from 0%. The front mesh which felt like it was burning my skin just felt pleasantly warm. In the same time period Static had gone from 79% to 87% while Cold increased by a smaller 5%, from 67% to 72%. With an hour going by and no searchers I was a lot calmer. Going from near invisible to the enemy to being slightly vulnerable had racked my nerves. I didn''t even know if they had figured out someone who could hide their Resonance did the attack on Shockandrun and WannabeThor. The only one who could report back was Shockandrun and it''s entirely possible he thought the attack was from extremely long range. Or by an angry teenager who likes to hit people with rocks. That wasn''t something I could rely on though. They definitely knew someone was in town from the World map ability everyone gained a week ago. Trying to puzzle out what they might know, or guess, while I waited for Crystal to reply consumed another hour. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ By noon Cold Resistance had hit 76% and stopped no matter what I did or how many I used. I came to the conclusion that the freezer just wasn''t cold enough. The dial in the Freezer was set to normal so I switched it to the colder setting. A quick check online said that was likely around -18C and -23C respectively, but without the manual I couldn''t be sure. I stopped using the ice packs and put them back in the freezer. I figured I''d try again later when the freezer hit it''s new colder temperature. With it being a while since I ate I went back to grinding Allergy Resistance with Poison Ivy and Static the bug zapper I''d grown to hate. A bit over an hour and a half later I had my reward that was worth swallowing my vomit a few times.
Due to your actions you have evolved a Title. Moderately Masochistic has evolved to Obstinacy III. You have gained 10 EXP.
Which was followed a short while later with the window I''d expected.
Due to your actions you have evolved a Resistance. Allergy Resistance has become Poison Resistance. You have gained 1 Physical Stamina. You have gained 1 Vitality. You have gained 50 EXP.
That only left Static Resistance to grind since I was fairly sure that Poison Ivy wouldn''t raise Poison Resistance after what happened during the Heat to Fire Resistance change. Which meant it was time to go back and research while zapping my knee. So I looked up food poisons, with one hand, that seemed the easiest to find. Most of the results were fairly useless. I was sure I could find dangerous mushrooms for example if I searched, but enough to be useful? Crystal finally replied halfway through my search. The OPP had moved her temporarily to a detachment 30 minutes east of the city at a small town of 2000 people. They wanted her to be safe as they sorted out how to best use her power with their higher-ups down south. Funnily enough I hadn''t gone by the station on the bypass during my searches, just within a block, so I didn''t know they had moved at some point. Crystal was a bit annoyed I''d told her to go to the wrong address...but she was also a resident! How was it only my fault? So that was totally useless in terms of me grinding {Decrease Mental Presence} but very good for her. Sending her to them was exactly the right decision it seemed since they were taking it seriously. Going back to my research I found Red Kidney Beans was the answer I was looking for. They were bad enough that if you ate 5 raw ones you could be sick within 10 minutes if unlucky, and you would certainly be sick within a few hours. A bit less than a half hour later I hit my final grinding goal.
Due to your actions you have evolved a Resistance. Static Resistance has become Electrical Resistance. You have gained 1 Physical Stamina. You have gained 1 Vitality. You have gained 50 EXP.
I kept on using the bug zapper for another 10 minutes but didn''t get even 1% into Electrical Resistance. I really had no clue how to go on with a couple resistances. Cold might level up after the freezer temperate change, or it might not. I didn''t want to start shoving forks into electrical sockets. The two that seemed simple though were Poison and Fire. For poison a quick trip to the mall for a package of Red Kidney Beans would do it. If I slowly chewed them like hard candy I had no doubt it would raise Poison Resistance. For Fire Resistance I could likely just buy a bunch of lighters. Both Resistances seemed like they would grind my {Regeneration} ability too. Without {Regeneration} I''d likely end up with burn scars and half my stomach lining flushed down some toilet. Around 3pm I took out Nilla and then headed to the mall. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ It was time to begin hunting. Armed with my grocery bag of Red Kidney Beans, a fistful of lighters, a couple latex gloves, and a dozen good throwing stones, I started my search pattern. I started east of the mall and jail and worked my way north then west. I''d searched the area just a week earlier so my {Mapping} skill had an accurate map of it. The fact that the Resonance range was twice as long and I now had {Increase Mental Sensing} on top of that meant it was dramatically easier to search. A given area took a third as long to check. Two Resonances were inside jail when I went near it. One was Arsonboy and the other I was fairly sure was WannabeThor. I only sensed him briefly before I ran away Friday night but it felt right. The most unsurprising thing was that I could feel a few bloodlusts in the area around the prison. I assumed they were from plain clothes police ready to step in if there was another attempt on the prison. It wasn''t worth going close though to find out if I was right. I could use the two of them to raise my {Decrease Mental Presence} but it would mean staying most of the evening and into the night nearby. With only a couple restaurants and one 24 coffee shop to hide in that likely wasn''t the best idea. I''d definitely stick out after a few hours. I swept north towards the Airport. Previously I''d never searched around the Airport, just the base of the hill to it, because it was a pain and likely to be fruitless. After walking up the steep 3 block long hill and searching...it was fruitless. I went back down the hill and started a zigzag towards the University area. The only productive thing was Poison Resistance was at 7% and I was getting down the timing of how often to eat without feeling too sick. It had been slowing me down. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ A bit after 7pm I got my first hit. Someone was driving the bypass and heading west to my south. It felt weak enough I knew I was outside their range. Continuing my search I passed by the hotel I''d stayed in two weeks earlier. I reached to store where I bought the jogging suit when I hit paydirt. To the south, across the bypass, was a residential area made up of houses, a couple apartment buildings and a grade school. There was at least three and likely less than 6 Resonances from there. I needed time, or getting close, to sort it more clearly than that, but one of them was definitely the passenger from the car in the morning. One was likely Shockandrun. It was like listening to people whispering at the edge of your hearing around a corner. I tried to triangulate them on my the map in {Mapping} as I slowly moved west. After a few hundred feet I was directly north of them and had roughly located them as just south of an elementary school on the other side of the bypass. Checking my skills I could see {Increase Mental Sensing} visibly moving. {Decrease Mental Presence} had moved a percent for the first time since Friday so I was sure I was at the edge of the 800'' range. The brief encounters Saturday and earlier Sunday weren''t enough to increase a Master level skill. "Skills Window"
{Acting} (Novice, Passive) EXP 58.6% {Climbing} (Beginner, Passive) EXP: 7.9%. {Decrease Mental Presence} (Master, Passive) EXP: 46.7% {Dodging} (Novice, Active) EXP: 8.8%. {Hiding} (Advanced, Active) EXP: 64.9%. {Identification} (Novice, Active) EXP: 7.6%. {Increase Mental Sensing} (Intermediate, Passive) EXP: 19.5% {Jumping} (Beginner, Passive) EXP: 4.7%. {Knife Fighting} (Beginner, Passive) EXP: 2.7%. {Mapping} (Intermediate, Active) EXP: 78.2%. {Memorization} (Intermediate, Passive) EXP: 91.4%. {Pain Tolerance} (Master, Passive) EXP: 26.2%. {Running} (Advanced, Passive) EXP: 83.9%. {Sense Bloodlust} (Master, Passive) EXP: 51.8%. {Sneaking} (Advanced, Active) EXP: 46.7%. {Swimming} (Beginner, Passive) EXP: 3.2%. {Throwing} (Advanced, Active) EXP: 96.1% {Unarmed Throws} (Novice, Active) EXP: 0.0%. {Walking} (Master, Passive) EXP: 35.1%. {Will Crafting} (Novice, Active) EXP: 17.3%
I was currently in some scrub behind a car dealership north of the bypass. There was a strip mall nearby so I headed there to buy another hoodie from the same sports clothing store that I bought the last one from. This time I bought a dark blue one. I headed west to the highway cross at the new hospital, then south and around to the elementary school. I needed to get closer and pinpoint them a bit more. As I walked I started timing the how long it took for {Decrease Mental Presence} to change by 1%. The first thing I noticed was that the old elementary school had apparently been torn down at some point and a new one was being built. The frame of the building was up but the grounds were extremely messy with mud and gravel. A few construction machines were scattered around the edges of the building. I ducked through a gap in the fencing into the yard. Trying not to sink in the mud I crossed the yard to the south side. On that side the road was shaped in an L as it passed along the front of the building. I was at the corner of the L, with the long section running east, and the short part running south. A house on the street south from me had 2 cars in the driveway and a third on the side of the street. I could feel the Resonance from inside it. The sun was already going down when I reached my viewpoint but there was still light enough that people nearby could see me if I hung around out in the open on the construction site. And I had no clue what the hell I was doing there. I''d kind of went with the flow but forgot to make any sort of plan. I had no quest. No real chance at storming and defeating what was likely a half dozen people with powers in the house. Calling the cops from my cell would just give away my number and they might not take it seriously. Even if they sent a car to check it out there''s no way for them to know who has powers. And one or two cops likely had no chance if the people with powers attacked first at close range. I checked my calculations on {Decrease Mental Presence}. It was going up 1% every 6 minutes. At 48.9% that meant roughly 5 hours and 6 minutes before it hit Grandmaster if I stayed not too far away. I decided I''d walk around the neighborhood until it was solidly dark. Provided I didn''t go to close I could raise my skill while slowly chewing the kidney beans. The lighters just sat in the bag in my pocket. It wouldn''t be smart to try burning myself while wandering around to say the least. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ It was close to 9:30pm when I came back to the construction site which was barely lit up by the waxing crescent moon. I''d passed within view a few times over the last hours. The only change was that a new car now was at the curbside. A half an hour earlier I''d felt some of them come back and a few of those at the house leave. I assumed it was them switching shifts in their searching patterns. I''d raised my Poison Resistance to 13%, and {Decrease Mental Presence} was at 64.9%. I needed 3.5 hours to reach Grandmaster. Which didn''t feel all that long after 3 weeks of training various things. If nothing else the past weeks had increased my patience level for things other than books and games. I''d also slowly been able to distinguish between the different Resonances too. Two of the ones I''d learned to recognize left at the shift change. Of the two who came back, I was sure one of them was Shockandrun. The other''s resonance was easy to memorize now that I knew everyone else inside. The problem was I still didn''t have a plan other than grind {Decrease Mental Presence}. There were 5 of them inside in total, that plus the other 2 meant I now could at least differentiate 7 of the 9 power users. There was one small thing that had happened that worried me a bit too. As I''d walked the neighborhood I''d twice felt a strange but light mental pressure that was hard to describe. This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience. Each time Psi resistance had leveled up 1% but nothing else happened. I setup in the deep shadows behind a backhoe where I could see the house but none of the houses had a good view of me and waited to see what I could learn. It wasn''t a good plan, but the only one I could think of. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ At midnight the final two I didn''t recognize came back while 2 others went out. This time I was able to see all four even if not very well. Leaving was a middle aged guy, maybe Asian, along with a younger blonde guy as the passenger. Coming back was a tall, but otherwise average, brunette and a shorter, chunkier male. I was fairly sure they were the driver and passenger that passed me by in the morning. A few minutes later {Decrease Mental Presence} had just reached 89.1% on the window I kept up when I felt that strange mental pressure again. I pulled up my Resistances Window.
Mental
FearN/A
Forced Mental StatesN/A
InsanityN/A
SleepN/A
Physical
Poison17%
Cold67%
Electrical0%
Fire0%
LightN/A
Pain47%
Special
KIN/A
MagicN/A
Psi5%
I had time to notice Psi went up another 1% when suddenly I felt the general bloodlust in the house spike up. I''d felt bloodlust from the house all along but it was mild and not really focused so it wasn''t painful. This was. It was directly stabbing me and it was clear someone had somehow noticed me. Seconds later other bloodlusts were reaching in my direction. They weren''t as clearly focused on my body, but still in my direction. I was already standing after the first hit of bloodlust pain. The bag of kidney beans went into a pocket as I started running west through the school yard. There was a small section of bush to my south but it basically connected to the houses back yards and would be a poor choice to hide in. I didn''t know they found me but it was clear that only one of them could track me. The rest just seemed to know what direction I was in. The main thing was to not panic, try to get distance so the one person would hopefully lose me, and avoid letting the others get close enough to sense me themselves. Within a minute I knew that wasn''t going to work. I''d climbed up and over the school''s fence into some kind of industrial area. It wasn''t big with one large building and dirt parking on the east side. I didn''t take the time to try and figure out what they did there, I raced through the property and hopped a fence into someone''s back yard. I could feel two of them circling the block south of me, two to my east circling that way, and one still back at the house. Crossing through the yard and across the road I saw the car south of me heading my way. My body was on automatic {Running}, {Climbing} and {Jumping} while I tried to make a plan. West of me a block was a main road, then industrial area, then mixed bush with houses and industrial areas all the way to the Reservation''s land miles away. The industrial areas were particularly bad though since you could drive onto the large lots and except for some vehicles and containers the line of sight was far longer than residential areas. North was the highway/bypass and beyond that residential and a few businesses until the hill. East I''d just come from. South was houses until the downtown business area. I was roughly 8 blocks north and 8 west of where I''d had my arm broken by the construction worker. I decided to head south. I needed an hour with as many of them within 800 feet of me as possible to grind {Decrease Mental Presence}. With tons of backyards to cross and {Hiding} to help point out when I was out of sight I had no doubt I could do it. As long as they stayed in their cars and others didn''t come.
Due to your actions you have gained a Resistance. Panic Resistance has reached 1%. You have gained 1 Mental Stamina. You have gained 50 EXP.
I still had the breath to laugh since with my stats I hadn''t dug deep into my stamina after a few minutes of running. Checking the resistance window Panic Resistance replaced Fear on the list. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ For the first 20 minutes it wasn''t very hard. Fences didn''t pose a problem to my {Climbing} skill. And with only two cars they could only race to block me off only for me to double back and cross the street behind them. They could have used the two cars more aggressively but they seemed to be content to just stay near me. That started to worry me. If they were willing to do U-turns or other illegal driving then things would have been a lot harder. There were a couple times I crossed behind their cars that if they reversed I might have been hit. But the only one breaking any laws was me as I trespassed through dozens of yards. It was clear they were playing a waiting game. And the mental pressure never went entirely away. I did lose it occasionally when I switched directions in deep shadows only to be found again when I was lit up by streetlights as I crossed to new blocks. Suddenly I felt two more Resonances approaching. That meant 6 of them were near me. The one left behind in the base never joined up. It wasn''t long before a third car was in the mix and then it was infinitely harder to keep away. Two of the cars would circle whatever block I was inside while the third tried to block ahead. That was awkward but the main problem was 3 of the 6 got out of the cars and chased me on foot. One was the tall brunette, the other was the young blonde guy, and the third I couldn''t see but I knew it was the shorter chunkier guy from his Resonance. For the first time I could start to match their powers to them. The chunky guy was invisible most of the time. Invisible was mostly a useless power due to Resonance and {Sense Bloodlust}. It would be dangerous to girls in locker rooms but not to someone with a power. The blonde guy though was far more dangerous. When he ran seemed to almost teleport each step. He would take a step and be 5 feet ahead suddenly, next step he was another 5 feet further along. I still didn''t know what the brunette could do but she was in good shape and while she couldn''t close she didn''t fall far behind either. With them using their powers it reminded me of the list for the area. My body and brain had been on automatic as I''d moved south through the residential area. The list I''d had was: Lightning God, Atmospheric Pulse, Poison Fiend, Ice Hand, Shelter, Dominator, Variable Invisibility, High Speed, Time''s Timer, Healing Wind, Light Mind, Distant Viewer, Firebringer, Shadow Forger, Laser, True Light, Air''s Birth, Pathmaster, Punishing Fist, Meteor, Heart of Glass, Garden. Likely the invisible guy was the owner of Variable Invisibility. The blonde guy likely High Speed. I mentally labeled them Invisdude and Highblonde. It was a bad habit but convenient. The strange thing was that Highblonde never left the sidewalk or streets. The first block after they jumped out and pursued on foot he was always easily pacing me but never went into the dark between houses. The problem was with just a few glances at his power as I ran down the center of the block, the long way, I could tell there was no way for me to cross streets with him now around. I slowed down and fumbled out the bag I''d brought. Ignoring the kidney beans spilling from it I grabbed at the rocks I''d put in the bag and carried all those hours earlier. When I pulled my fist out of the bag I had 4 rocks and a lighter in it. I wasted time throwing the lighter back in while the two behind me slowly got closer. I put the bag back in, 3 rocks into my left, and headed to the end of the block where I''d have to cross. Shockandrun along with Highblonde were waiting for me. Stopping in the shadow of a 3 story house I whipped a stone at Highblonde only for him to warp away as he stepped 5 feet towards Shockandrun instantly. The next rock went at Shockandrun but this time he didn''t run. He reached up an arm and a small area in front of him seemed to pulse out a shockwave that blew the rock off at an angle. Luckily it seemed to blow Highblonde away too. It was clear they hadn''t practiced fighting together. The third rock went at Highblonde as he was struggling to regain his balance. This time he didn''t see it coming as it stuck him on the left side of his stomach. The problem was that the brunette had time to catch up to me as I stood there throwing. I had time to turn and try to block the arm she reached out with my cast. She grabbed the cast through the hoodie and squeezed hard as she closed her eyes. A blue flash came from her hand and my arm instantly went numb. A cold feeling swept through my body and made my arm shake as I punched her in the throat. It''s hard to punch anyone in the throat seriously, much less a woman, but I never claimed to be nice when my life was on the line. My full strength wasn''t behind it originally and even less after whatever she did but she still went down. Chunky Invisdude was still a few dozen feet behind her when I turned and stumbled off at an angle from Shockandrun. He tried to intercept me but even shaken I was far, far, faster than him. I heard car doors slam as I ran into the driveway of a duplex across the street. I tried to pull back the arm of the hoodie but it was stuck to my left arm. I could feel with my right arm that the entire arm was cold but I couldn''t do anything with my left. My left arm just hung there. I couldn''t open my fist with the rock in it. None of my muscles responded. There was no pain in the arm but some in my shoulder and chest. It was clear that the woman had frozen my entire arm. {Regeneration} had helped my chest and shoulder a bit as I crossed out the other side of the block, but the arm stayed frozen as I dodged one of the pursuing cars yet again. It was clear the driver still wasn''t trying to hit me and he didn''t get out and chase. The only good thing was {Running} had adjusted my technique for the dead arm but {Climbing} was difficult in spots still. Both Shockandrun and Invisdude were in one car chasing me. Apparently neither had stayed to help the two I hurt. The close encounter had several benefits though. {Decrease Mental Presence} spiked up a few percentages when I checked it as I ran. Panic Resistance and Cold Resistance were both visibly counting up when I checked the Resistances window. Panic Resistance was at 23% while Cold Resistance was 94% and going up every few seconds. Psi Resistance had spiked up and reached 17% without me noticing until then. Less than a minute into crossing the next block I got the window.
Due to your actions you have evolved a Resistance. Cold Resistance has become Ice Resistance. You have gained 1 Physical Stamina. You have gained 1 Vitality. You have gained 50 EXP.
I still had no feeling or ability to move my left arm even with the evolved resistance. We were less than a block from the lake when they got serious. I wasn''t quite sure what my plan was. Each time I went into shadows I lost the mental pressure for longer periods of time but it still found me. I''d come to the conclusion that the mental pressure was the person back at the house using the Distant Viewer power. With a cell phone the Distant Viewer would be able to guide others to me. I''d made the guess that the power partially used a Psi lock on the target once spotted to follow it. It clearly wasn''t entirely by Psi lock or I wouldn''t lose it in shadows. And if it had only a remote viewing ability with no lock then I wouldn''t have any ability to resist it. {Decrease Mental Presence} was about to level to Grandmaster but that wouldn''t save me like I''d thought earlier. I needed to go somewhere they couldn''t follow me. Passing through the center of the last block, I was now at the lakefront on someone''s private beachfront. Swimming seemed my only solution at this point. I could lose the four following me. I could hopefully lose the Distant Viewer watching me in the waves, especially whenever the clouds covered the moon since there would be no streetlights near. The main problems were, swimming with heavy clothes is damn tough, and I''d presumably ruin my cell. Running down the beach across people''s property I was a few hundred yards from one of the public beaches when I thought of the solution. My power was slowly adapting to my needs and desires. All I needed to do was throw all my focus and willpower into one thing as I let my {Running} skill guide me down the lakefront. I started chanting between gasps. "Inventory Window!Inventory Window!Inventory Window!Inventory Window!Inventory Window!Inventory Window!Inventory Window!Inventory Window!Inventory Window!Inventory Window!Inventory Window!Inventory Window!Inventory Window!Inventory Window!Inventory Window!Inventory Window!Inventory Window!Inventory Window!" Two hundred feet later my power responded to my desperate focus.
Do you want to sacrifice 5 in all Basic Stats to convert that power to opening your Inventory Window? Yes/No?
"YES!" I screamed as I streaked towards the public beach.
You have unlocked your Inventory Window early. -5 to all Basic Stats
"Help Inventory Window"
Any non-living object on you or in your hands can moved into an unique space at will. Current limit is 2 cubic feet.
I pulled out the grocery bag to test it. Willing it into my Inventory I could see it disappear from my hand only to show up in a ghostly box floating ahead of me. Next was my shoes and socks. I stumbled a bit as they disappeared into my inventory. The sand and grass felt slightly chilly as I ran along the lake. A small island about 200 feet offshore was almost parallel to me. I decided to run/swim to it. The lake generally wasn''t very deep even if it was huge. You could often wade out hundreds of feet but it was kind of tricky. The water might be two feet deep, then a few feet past that it would drop to five feet deep, then back to three deep for a hundred yards. I heard car doors slam behind me as I raced into the surf. The waves were maybe a foot and a half at most deeper in but not very big where I was. The plan was to get behind one of the trees on the island, grind out the last 2% of {Decrease Mental Presence} and hit any of the bastards in the head with a rock who followed me. My cell and wallet went into the inventory next as I waded in. I was almost at the island when the first of them stumbled into the backyards. One of them was shouting into their cell when I looked back so likely the person back at their base told them to stop trailing along the road and go get me. The rock I pulled from inventory missed but they still took cover. They let me scramble up onto the island and hide. The island was the largest of 5 nearby. But even the largest was only 30 feet long, 15 feet wide and had 3 trees in the middle. It was still possible to hide where they couldn''t see me but I was easily visible from other angles. With time to catch my breath I had time to finally wonder why they hadn''t tried to kill me like they had Arsonboy and had actually killed Jason Gagnon along with the constable. Were they trying to capture me? That would make their actions make more sense. {Decrease Mental Presence} hit 99.0% and I said screw them to myself. I only needed them to be within 800 range for 6 more minutes. If I started wading out into the lake now I would reach Grandmaster before I was out of effective range. Slipping backwards into the water I started wading out just as the bloodlust behind me spiked massively. I could feel the stinging pain all over my body as {Sense Bloodlust} kicked in overdrive. I turned a dived under the water. It was only three feet deep there but I kicked myself down as my instincts screamed at me to get deep. Trying to dig deep into the sandy bottom with my one good hand and anchor myself futilely. The water exploded with light and pressure and a sudden searing pain in my legs. I was tossed forward by a shockwave and almost tumbled by it. The shockwave forced the breath from my chest as I gasped out the air into the water. A few moments later I tried to stand and get away only to find I couldn''t stand. Flipping on my back I reached down with my good hand to try and feel what happened as I looked back. All I could feel at first was my pants were ripped and torn from the middle of my thighs downwards. Slowly I could feel that my legs were literally missing chunks and my feet felt uneven. At first there was no pain. As I slowly tried to move backwards into deeper water the pain came as shock wore off. It was incredibly painful despite all my pain resistance and pain tolerance skill. 30 seconds after I was hit a second strike was came. And this time I could see it. Falling from the sky were 4 balls of fire that hit where I was before. I''d only moved a few dozen feet since my speed was crippled and the shockwave threw me another couple feet back towards the center of the lake. I turned and made the best speed I could for deeper water. I couldn''t walk properly and could only use my right arm but I still swam as best I could when possible. Another 30 seconds had passed when a third strike came in. Happily I was outside the shockwave range that time. A fourth, fifth, sixth, and even seventh strike came farther and farther behind but the person gave up. I could only assume that one of them had the Firebringer power. I could feel them spreading out along the beach either direction. But I was definitely outside their sensing range. I didn''t follow the shoreline though. The mental pressure seemed to have been lost ever since sometime before the third strike. I didn''t notice exactly when it disappeared. {Regeneration} was busy sealing my wounds still as I kept heading out until I got the notification.
Through use of the skill {Decrease Mental Presence} it has reached Grandmaster level. {Decrease Mental Presence} (Grandmaster, Passive) EXP: 0.1%. You have gained 0.5 Wisdom. You have gained 1 Mental Stamina. You have gained 50 EXP.
"Help Decrease Mental Presence"
{Decrease Mental Presence} Novice - User''s mind falls into a mental state that reduces mental presence by 5%, must be stationary. Beginner - User''s mind falls into a mental state that reduces mental presence by 10%, can move slowly. Intermediate - User''s mind falls into a mental state that reduces mental presence by 20%, can move normally. Advanced - User''s mind falls into a mental state that reduces mental presence by 40%, can move at a fast walk. Master - User''s mind falls into a mental state that reduces mental presence by 80%, can do any actions. Grandmaster -User''s mind falls into a mental state that reduces mental presence by 95%. Requires 20 Willpower to enforce upon the world. Demi-god - User''s mind falls into a mental state that reduces mental presence by 99.5%. Requires 70 Willpower to enforce upon the world.
I would have laughed if I didn''t worry about swallowing one of the waves. There was a level past Grandmaster. And it required an absurd 70 willpower. As a plus though with 99.5% reduction in sensing they would need to be within 4 feet of me at Demi-god skill level to sense Resonance. Now that resonance was down to 40 feet I headed south. It would take a long time with my current body before I was directly west of my house but there was still 4 hours until light. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I was exhausted when I reached the point nearest my house. I''d long ago moved closer to shore where it was two feet deep. It was 3:30am according to my cell. I''d pulled it out when I could safely check it. I didn''t think I was bleeding anymore but I was lightheaded and dizzy. Between me and my house was a bar that closed at 3am. I was long past the point of caring if some random person saw me staggering past with burned and ripped pants. I mainly was waiting for the police patrols to move away. They normally patrolled the bar area heavily until a while after they closed. But tonight I''d seen them going by along the waterfront a bunch. Likely at some point our running chase had stirred up some police attention, maybe someone spotted the Firebringer strike. The cop cars were giving off a fair bit of bloodlust. When the timing was right I slipped up the beach and staggered home. It was impossible to force my feet into shoes. I couldn''t look down without wanting to puke. Using my Obstinacy titles and every bit of pain resistance I slowly staggered home. The 4 blocks felt like the longest trip of my life. In the middle my last shameful title evolved to Obstinacy IV which helped ignore a bit more pain. I opened the door, sat in the doorway and ordered Nilla to go outside by herself. It would have been almost impossible a few weeks ago but she went, peed, and ran back. I closed the door, grabbed some granola bars, pulled myself upstairs and ate on top of my comforter where I wouldn''t stain the sheets with blood. I knew I needed all the food I could tolerate to rebuild. After 4 bars I turned off the light and fell asleep. It hadn''t been a good day after all. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Author''s Note: Sorry took so long but this chapter clocks in around 8k words, about twice as long as last chapter and 3 times longer than the average of the ones before that. I tried not too add too much unimportant information but likely there is some. One thing I don''t want to get rid of is the feel that it''s a real city with real directions and dimensions but maybe I could describe it better. The other night I actually walked part of the route I used in the story around 10pm just to get a feel for it and break the block. I hadn''t realized until then they had ripped the school down to the foundation and were rebuilding it to replace itself and 2 other elementary schools. City Map Author''s Note: Since the newest chapter has been a bit delayed by me being a dumbass and extra hours at work I figured I''d put a slightly updated map out. I mentioned it in the comments in Chapter 22, then went back and edited in links in Chapter 1 for new readers. But for regular readers who missed it here you go. I''ve hopes to get the next chapter out Wednesday night or more likely Thursday afternoon...but we''ll see sorry. This is slightly updated with the Police Station and Hardware store marked on it. If there''s any other markings people would like for the story let me know in comments. Spoiler : If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it. While I''m not exactly keeping where I live a deep secret I''d still prefer not to name it. But here''s a map of the areas used in the story for those interested. If you do recognize the city please don''t name it. Edit: Even though I''m broke I don''t particularly need donations at the moment. It''s more of a milestone for passing 50k and for the future. 23) Calm before the steel-toe buttkicking Monday, September 21st, 2015 A window was waiting for me when I woke.
Due to your actions you have gained a Resistance. Infection Resistance has reached 3%. You have gained 1 Physical Stamina. You have gained 50 EXP.
I had slept for less than 2 hours when the pain, and the gross feeling of lying in wet clothes, woke me again. The biggest blessing from this power was the fact that it distributed the pain across my body instead of crippling pain in one spot, but even so I felt like I''d been beaten across every inch of my skin and my bones were cracked. Careful of how I moved I threw the granola bar wrappers into the garbage by my bed and started stripping down to see the full extent. My pants came off easily, but the hoodie was still partially stuck to my arm. Pulling it off was possible unlike the night before but skin came with it in spots. Under the hoodie my left arm was cool but not frozen like it initially was. The cast was cracked in multiple spots and there was bruising up into my shoulder. It was impossible for me to tell what happened inside my arm but I was fairly sure I had a lot of tissue and even bone damage from the Ice attack. I''d avoided looking at my legs for the longest time, the brief glance I''d taken last night was enough to turn my stomach. I was missing three toes on my left foot, burn craters going to the bone ran all the way up my calves to my knees. If the skin hadn''t regenerated while in the water I clearly would have been staring at bone instead of fresh skin. Large chunks of muscle were missing and the flesh on my right knee was gone down to the bone. I couldn''t feel any tension in my left Achilles tendon. It was clearly impossible for a normal human to walk with that much muscle, and likely tendons, missing. The walk the previous night was a blur now but I could only assume my power held my body together enough to make it home. The first step was clearly pain pills. I basically had 3 different things helping with the pain already, Pain Resistance, {Pain Tolerance}, and Obstinacy IV, but being clearheaded as possible was a priority. Using the walls I pulled myself to the bathroom and sat on the toilet cover while I ate a couple ibuprofen. Staring at the bottle I had an idea a bit late. I took a third pill and tried to concentrated my willpower on it. A window popped up.
Temporary Pain Pill. 100% Pain Resistance for 1 hour. -5 Psi/min to Creator
All I could do was laugh after I ate it. I took advantage of the pain relief to smear my legs with disinfectant, to help with infection, while I thought. If I''d had unlimited time to grind all my skills then last night would have turned out far differently. Though if each of them had unlimited time to grind their powers up to maximum it might have gone far worse too. They were also clearly trying to catch me, not kill me until the very end. If the guy with the Firebringer power had used that when I was crossing the open street between blocks I doubt I''d be alive now. Maybe I would have dodged some of it, but with others blocking me I would eventually have been burned to death far before I could get any kind of Fire Resistance built up. Even the Ice Hand power could have killed if she''d frozen my head. It took hours for my resistance and {Regeneration} to get back even limited use after she touched it for a moment. {Regeneration} had been stuck at Advanced level every since it healed my broken arm, but I was fairly sure rebuilding my body would bring it to Master level. The first question was would I need it to be Grandmaster level to heal everything or not. "Help Regeneration"
{Regeneration} Novice - Heals small scrapes, cuts and bruises at 2 times users normal rate. Beginner - Heals cuts less than 1/4 inch deep, deep tissue bruising, small bone cracks, and 1st degree burns at 4 times users normal rate. Intermediate - Heals serious cuts, bone cracks, and large 1st degree burns at 8 times users normal rate. Advanced - Heals all stab wounds into muscle/skin, almost completely broken bones, and 2nd degree burns at 16 times users normal rate. Master - Heals minor organ damage, resets and heals broken bones, 3rd degree burns at 32 times users normal rate.
The burns covering my legs were clearly 3rd degree burns in the deepest spots with 2nd and 1st degree burns along the edges. The main question was, do toes count as minor organ damage or not. I had a bad feeling that they would take Grandmaster or even Demi-god level regeneration. Unfortunately I couldn''t see the progress level of {Regeneration} since it was my only Ability. I needed to create another ability somehow and soon. If {Regeneration} stalls after healing everything but my toes I wouldn''t know with the way things stood. The clear goal of the day was healing and gaining a new body based Ability somehow. Preferably one that would help if I ran into another situation like Sunday night. The phrase ''armies study how to win the last war'' came to mind but I wasn''t sure I could even guess at what future fights would be like. The variety of powers out there made things too uncertain. I slide down the stairs on my butt and grabbed some more granola bars and a water jug before heading back upstairs to my bed. I grabbed a hair dryer as I passed the bathroom, plugged it in beside the bed and let it try to dry the large oblong wet spot on the comforter while I sat and ate. I wouldn''t bother with the sheets below the comforter. Besides getting enough calories into myself to help {Regeneration} the next step was sorting out the aftermath. "Resistances Window"
Mental
Panic36%
Forced Mental StatesN/A
InsanityN/A
SleepN/A
Physical
Poison17%
Ice42%
Electrical0%
Fire4%
LightN/A
Pain59%
Special
KIN/A
MagicN/A
Psi24%
I''d gained a bit of Fire Resistance from the attack but not much since the damage was done so fast. But Ice, Pain, Panic, and Psi resistance had all went up a fair bit compared to Saturday. I never did get a chance to unlock Light or Sleep Resistance but Sunday night didn''t exactly go smoothly. I''d hesitated to open up my Character window since it had taken a hit when I created the Inventory window but meh. "Character Window"
ClassExplorerLevel2
EXP2550Next Level EXP3000
HP197/220MP280/280
Physical Energy310/310Mental Energy760/760
Psi306/350KI190/190
HP Regen3.52/minMP Regen0.28/min
PE Regen0.31/minME Regen0.76/min
Psi Regen0.35/minKI Regen0.19/min
Title: Obstinacy IV
Agility14/14Hand-Eye12/12
Intelligence35/35Luck2/4
Mental Stamina70/76Physical Stamina27/31
Strength19/19Vitality22/22
Wisdom28/28Willpower23/23
Titles available: Obstinacy IV, Polyglot I
I didn''t regret the 5 point cost to create an Inventory Window but I was definitely a bit weaker in most ways. There was two surprises though. The first was that Willpower didn''t drop. I''d assumed it was based upon Wisdom since I''d noticed it went up a bit every full point in Wisdom. So I thought it would drop but apparently not. The other was that I had 2/4 Luck. 4 was still more than I''d started with but I''d never seen Luck being used up like that. Checking Skills was next to see where they were at. "Skills Window"
{Acting} (Novice, Passive) EXP 60.3% {Climbing} (Beginner, Passive) EXP: 18.5%. {Decrease Mental Presence} (Grandmaster, Passive) EXP: 0.7% {Dodging} (Novice, Active) EXP: 38.4%. {Hiding} (Advanced, Active) EXP: 75.2%. {Identification} (Novice, Active) EXP: 7.8%. {Increase Mental Sensing} (Intermediate, Passive) EXP: 99.9% {Jumping} (Beginner, Passive) EXP: 61.2%. {Knife Fighting} (Beginner, Passive) EXP: 2.7%. {Mapping} (Intermediate, Active) EXP: 88.6%. {Memorization} (Intermediate, Passive) EXP: 91.5%. {Pain Tolerance} (Master, Passive) EXP: 70.3%. {Running} (Advanced, Passive) EXP: 99.9%. {Sense Bloodlust} (Master, Passive) EXP: 62.7%. {Sneaking} (Advanced, Active) EXP: 51.4%. {Swimming} (Beginner, Passive) EXP: 76.3%. {Throwing} (Advanced, Active) EXP: 98.2% {Unarmed Throws} (Novice, Active) EXP: 0.0%. {Walking} (Master, Passive) EXP: 38.5%. {Will Crafting} (Novice, Active) EXP: 26.7%
The shiny Grandmaster {Decrease Mental Presence} obviously drew my eyes first. But after that I scanned down the list and spotted the two skills at 99.9% which confused me. I could understand one skill happening to stop at 99.9% but two seemed unlikely. I wasted 20 minute of my pain free time trying to come up with a theory of why those would stop at 99.9%, especially {Running}. And the only theory I could come up with was that my power was reinforcing the power up of {Decrease Mental Presence} as a priority even over running. Since I couldn''t escape by just running away, I needed to lose the others. I''d slowly been realizing that my ''RPG Growth'' power wasn''t quite what I thought it was originally but I started to wonder if these powers were fundamentally different than people seemed to think they were even on the site. My power seemed to draw from my mental state on how it developed. Presumably I had one major advantage over most of those with powers. I could see how my power responded to me while they just had feelings or guesses. Why didn''t I gain a {Cooking} skill? Or for that matter a {Cleaning}, {Vacuuming} or even {Mopping} skill from work? My guess was that my power had somewhat realized I didn''t want to develop in that direction. Now that my willpower, and perhaps intelligence, was higher it seemed to respond better. Thinking back even those titles were likely because my willpower and mental clarity were too low, leaving my power partially confused on why I was so happy as my skills went up. Normally my brain was all over the place with no clear direction. Sorting through that used up most of my Psi energy and a lot of the hour the will crafted pill gave me. I decided to sleep while the pain was gone, recover PSI and then create another pill when I woke. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The familiar pain of a window woke me about 4 hours later at 11am.
Through use of the ability {Regeneration} it has reached Master level. {Regeneration} (Master, Passive) EXP: 2.6%.
Checking my Character Window again gave me: "Character Window"
ClassExplorerLevel2
EXP2550Next Level EXP3000
HP198/220MP280/280
Physical Energy310/310Mental Energy760/760
Psi306/350KI190/190
HP Regen7.04/minMP Regen0.28/min
PE Regen0.31/minME Regen0.76/min
Psi Regen0.35/minKI Regen0.19/min
Title: Obstinacy IV
Agility14/14Hand-Eye12/12
Intelligence35/35Luck3/4
Mental Stamina76/76Physical Stamina31/31
Strength19/19Vitality22/22
Wisdom28/28Willpower23/23
Titles available: Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.Obstinacy IV, Polyglot I
My HP Regen had doubled, and my Luck had recovered a bit back to 3/4. My current hps had gone up slightly but obviously there was some cap caused by the wounds or it would have reached max in a few minutes. I will crafted another pain free pill and took it. First up was calling and telling my boss I needed Tuesday off, I told him I''d hurt my back again and while I could work I''d likely be crippled for days. The call went fairly quick and he gave me until Friday to recover. I trusted him and could have told him the truth about everything but what he didn''t know, couldn''t be read from his mind. I felt like I was getting a bit more paranoid every day but it wasn''t necessarily a bad thing. Next up was opening the door to let Nilla out to pee. She was more than capable of doing it now without supervision. I didn''t have to worry about her running off. I took a brief shower, smeared more disinfectant while trying not to look at the fresh skin in the craters, and started cooking a ton of food. I wasn''t quite starving but the hunger never went away for long while I was regenerating. There was no sign of the 3 toes growing back but already there was some tissue between my skin and bones. What had been bone barely covered with skin now had a slight amount of sponginess when I touched the wounds. All the while I was pondering abilities like super strength or speed but I had the instinctive feeling that those were too powerful. That if I tried to create them my RPG Growth power would essentially halt any progress at all. That ''feeling'' opened up more questions. Could powers themselves be warped by their users? If someone had say an ''Ultimate Ice Skating'' power could they warp it to be say the ''Ultimate Hockey Player'' power? It was a silly example but I felt there was a System behind all our powers. Trying to find out what rules it had might be easier for me than most even though I was far from having any good answers for my questions. Thinking on the previous night though there was only one ability that easily came to mind. The ability to see in the dark. I''d stumbled a number of times when I couldn''t see the ground ahead. The combo of flawless balanced running from {Running} and instant memorization of the train ahead when I did have some light helped a lot, but couldn''t perfectly help in shadowed areas. I could have run a lot faster if I hadn''t had to avoid shadowed areas. Normally when being chased those shadowy areas would have helped but not with Resonance guiding other power users. What I needed next was a way to make it clear to my power or the System behind it what I wanted to do. ... Sitting in a closet trying to read a book in the faint light coming through the crack above the door felt fairly childish. I''d blocked the bottom crack with a towel so only a small bit of light was coming into the closet. Almost 20 minutes of straining my eyes, that could barely see I was even holding a book later, and the usual pain showed. Not terribly surprisingly the pain seemed mostly focused on my eyes until it slowly spread across my body.
Due to your actions you have gained an Ability. The ability {Night Vision} (Novice, Passive) EXP: 0.2%, has been created. You have unlocked the Ability window.
"Help Night Vision"
{Night Vision} Novice - Allows the user''s eyes to collect 5% extra light. Beginner - Allows the user''s eyes to collect 10% extra light.
"Ability Window"
{Night Vision} (Novice, Passive) EXP: 0.2%. {Regeneration} (Master, Passive) EXP: 21.5%.
{Regeneration} seemed to be grinding fast even after reaching Master level. Perhaps because I mostly wasn''t using my other powers, even gaining {Night Vision} didn''t take long. Or because my injuries were so bad. The three toes though didn''t seem to be growing back. The stubs of them seem to have just sealed over. It was a bit before noon when the day''s plan seemed fairly clear. To avoid grinding most of my skills and try to concentrate my power and reach Grandmaster {Regeneration} as soon as possible. Toes are good to have. At exactly 11:59 my cell alarm went off. I''d set it earlier so that I didn''t sleep in past the noon regional news. Today was the first day the courts were open since WannabeThor had been captured at the jail. I logged into the new channel on my computer and started to watch. Even though the regional news covered a few cities the case was first on the show. The summary of the appearance before a judge, the lawyer''s statement and the police was: - WannabeThor''s name was Richard Mathews and he had a fractured jaw... - He claimed to have confused memories of the previous 2 weeks, but couldn''t deny the two killings - He had been reported missing by family a bit over a week ago City police also reported during an interview that two people were found wandering the western part of the city with confused memories early in the morning. Both had powers and had been missing for days from roughly the same area as Richard Mathews. I went and made another pain pill after that. I needed a clear head. It didn''t take a genius to figure out that those 2 were likely the two I hit, Highblonde and the brunette with the Ice Hand power. The chance of two other people coming into town and wandering that area was low. It could be two different ones of those chasing me, but all of them were still chasing me until 3am. I could occasionally feel them in the distance before I came out of the water and made my way home. The things that the three of them had in common was they had confused memories, were missing a while, and I hurt them. Sadly I actually considered for a moment whether I had the power to confuse people I hit but that seemed extremely unlikely since no skill or ability showed that. I''d wondered more than once when all that extra Intelligence stat would kick in. Mind control was the next thing that came to mind. If someone had a mind control ability that would explain why they disappeared and perhaps why their memories are confused. The question was if that was true, was it pain, or shock or something else about the fights that broken the control. My evil inner child kind of liked the idea of hitting people with a rock from 300 feet to ''save'' them. But without knowing what other factors were involved it was hard to go on a rampage and save people. Not including that I could barely walk even with all my pain control. Walking too while overriding the pain would likely rip the healing areas to shreds too. I browsed the list of powers again. Atmospheric Pulse, Ice Hand, Variable Invisibility, High Speed, Healing Wind, Distant Viewer, Firebringer, Laser, Punishing Fist, Dominator, Lightning God, Poison Fiend, Shelter, Time''s Timer, Light Mind, Shadow Forger, Air''s Birth, Pathmaster, True Light, Meteor, Heart of Glass, Garden. The obviously suspicious one was Dominator. I couldn''t quite rule out Light Mind and Heart of Glass though. Anything with Mind was suspicious, and Glass reminded me of how easily pain seemed to break people out of the control. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Hours went by with endless tail chasing speculation, brief naps, and steady healing, that was only broken when I felt 3 familiar Resonances off in the distance. It was a bit after my 6th meal of the day at 8pm. I''d first felt some strong bloodlust''s off in the distance but that wasn''t uncommon after I hit Master level in {Sense Bloodlust} so I wasn''t suspicious until they reached Resonance range. It was Shockandrun, the Firebringer guy, and what I was pretty sure was the resonance for the Distant Viewer, moving along the waterfront to my west. Moments after I felt them my {Increase Mental Sensing} leveled up.
Through use of the skill {Increase Mental Sensing} it has reached Advanced level. The skill {Increase Mental Sensing} (Advanced, Passive) EXP: 0.1%, has been created. You have gained 0.5 Wisdom. You have gained 1 Mental Stamina. You have gained 10 EXP.
I''d been using 800 feet as the rough range of sensing Resonance even though I''d never been able to measure it. Advanced {Increase Mental Sensing} gave me an extra 40% range, which meant 1120 feet. A bit less than a quarter mile. What was interesting, besides the fact that they didn''t go back to their jobs, was that the road along the waterfront only connected with the rest of the roads at certain spots due to the train tracks downtown. For the first time I was able to estimate the full range of my {Sense Bloodlust} and it was apparently affected by the {Increase Mental Sensing} 40% too. That would make it''s range around 2240 feet. If I could learn to distinguish particular bloodlusts like I can with Resonances, I could identify people at even longer ranges. So far I''d never really felt a special ''fingerprint'' to the bloodlusts but that didn''t mean I couldn''t evolve my power slightly to do it. There wasn''t much I could do about them searching for me other than stay hidden. If they did come along my side street I could hop the back fence into the neighbor''s yard and avoid their range but that was less than ideal, especially if it happened during daylight. About my only other option was leaving the city. I wanted to avoid going to the police if at all possible. Even if the government didn''t seem to have any plans for people with powers yet, I didn''t want anyone knowing about me. The backlash caused from the fighting all over the world was swiftly bringing hatred and jealousy out in the open from large sections of the population. Those that didn''t already think we were tools of Satan thought it was unfair and too many of the people with powers were acting badly. Even the pastor with the ability to heal in the US had been harassed with death threats. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ A bit after 10pm I got the next window.
Through use of the ability {Regeneration} it has reached Grandmaster level. {Regeneration} (Grandmaster, Passive) EXP: 0.1%.
It seemed incredibly fast for a Master skill to level up, but I was trying to avoid splitting my power. The extent of the injuries this time likely helped too. The toes stubs felt itchy. The next pain pill was will crafted to ignore itchiness too even if it cost an extra .5 Psi/Min. I really didn''t watch to interrupt any healing, if it wasn''t just in my head. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ At 11pm I was on meal #8, and I can''t count how many trips to the bathroom, when I sat down to watch the evening news to see if there were any more developments. The 6pm news was just a rehash of the noon show plus things I didn''t care about. The police tactical unit had raided a house, around 7pm, on the west side of the city after interviewing the 3 people with powers. Backup from local and provincial police was involved. They didn''t find any of the other power users there. A dead body believed to be the owner of the house was found. They weren''t releasing details but a source had stated to a reporter that the person had been dead for several days. ... I didn''t know what to think. Had they killed the owner of the house to get a base? What the hell is wrong with renting rooms at a motel? If they were living there after then there''s a ton of DNA and fingerprints there. It didn''t make sense. All of the behavior seemed self-destructive in the end. Why kill the guy in the hospital and his police guard? Why try and kill or lightly electrocute Arsonboy, whichever it was they planned? Why kill what was likely a normal person instead of brainwashing him? Again, thoughts and plans chased around my head for hours while I healed. I still avoided learning any languages or other skills I could work on at home to concentrate on {Regeneration}. But I spent time browsing the Researcher''s site on powers. Nowhere did I find answers to my thoughts on how powers work though. I didn''t even find any of my personal questions. Just miscellaneous theories by people about aliens, gods, and time travel. By the time I went to bed at 3am {Regeneration} was at 7%, the toes were a bit longer, and I''d decided that tomorrow, when I was fully healed, would be a good day to go hunting. Last time I ran into them I had no plan and they could find me. My Psi resistance was up, my {Decrease Mental Presence} was leveled. They wouldn''t know I was there until I hit them. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Author''s Note: The calm to heal, reflect and prepare for buttkicking. At the end of the last chapter I noted that I''m not looking for donations at this point, it''s more for a milestone and the future. Now that I''ve a bit more time I''ll explain my plans for those interested. - Book 1 will finish around Chapter 27 or 28, it''s not quite decided yet - I''ll rewrite book 1 at least partly before starting book 2 - I plan to offer an unedited .epub, kindle and pdf version for a week to everyone who wants it - I''ll post a list of any changes for those not wanting to reread so no one is bored but also not lost before Book 2 starts When I have the finished editing book 1 I''ll put it up on Amazon. There won''t be a lot of reasons for any of you who have read the story here to buy it and I don''t plan to mention it much. Why an unedited free version for a while? Because of Amazon''s TOS. While you can get around them in the end they can pull your book if reported. I''m just looking for a wider audience in the end. Maybe I''ll get a lot of 1 star reviews(beside the ones on this site) for writing about a middle aged guy in 1st person journal form, or maybe I''ll pick up a handful of fans. Either way it should be interesting! 24) Streaking for the win. Tuesday, September 22nd, 2015 I woke up a few times from the pain but managed to get back to sleep, and eventually got up at noon. It was kind of hard to guess how developed my toes were. They looked not quite full grown but who the hell memorizes how big their toes are? I took a guess that they were 3/4 grown based on how the left ones compared to the right ones. The other injuries, even the inch deep gouges, were long healed and fresh skin covered the previous deep wounds. Presumably the toes took longer because bone and nerves had to be regrown along with muscles, blood vessels and skin. It had taken roughly 24 hours to regrow the toes to 3/4 size. That meant I should be able to go hunting around 8pm, after dark, with little or no issues. The first question was should I try and train something even if it puts me back a few hours. The second was what should I train if I do. Both questions were easy to answer. I had no particular need to rush out right away, and while the rocks were a good non-lethal long distance attack it would be best to have some kind of short ranged attack. The {Throwing} skill was excellent since ammunition was everywhere and it was a lot easier to ditch than a weapon. But pulling back my arm to throw at close range left my body open, especially if I stood still to increase accuracy. I still had no clue how to use my KI and MP but the fact that my power seemed to be responding to my intentions as my willpower and focus increased gave me some confidence. I couldn''t feel either my KI or M P, but if I could clearly ''communicate'' with my power I should get some result. I took Nilla out and made breakfast as I pondered which made more sense to try for. Magic seemed like it would be harder to focus on one intention. When I started to review all the different systems of magic I''d seen in games, novels, and manga, I was past 50 different types before I even got started. Just the paper RPG game novels I''d read as a kid had a dozen different systems alone. KI seemed a bit easier to distinguish. While every Xianxia or similar system was different they usually had meridians and dantians. While I couldn''t ''look inside'' me like every cultivator seemed to, I did have KI and my power seemed extremely flexible. So I sat at my desk, browsed a bit about meridians and dantians and wrote out by hand a fairly common system to clarify my intentions and focus my willpower. I pictured the dantian as storing power while meridians stretched out from it, like a combination of artieries and veins, to the surface of my skin. They would carry power from the dantian and distribute it to my body while also letting power from outside flow in. That seemed a bit weird but was the clearest image I could make and clarity seemed much more important after the example of creating the Inventory Window and other things this last month. By 1:30pm I had a rewritten it in short point form on a piece of notepaper along with a simple drawing of a human with meridians and a dantian at the stomach. The next step was to sit crosslegged on my bed, settle Nilla so she wouldn''t distract me, then review my notes a few times. Closing my eyes I started imagining absorbing energy from outside my body through lines running from the surface of my skin to my dantian. I imagined it filling the dantian then flowing back under control through my meridians to reinforce my muscles, tendons, and skin. I slowly lost track of my surroundings as my willpower focused deeper on the task. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Due to your actions you have gained an Ability. The ability {Super Ultra Mega Fantastically Weak KI Reinforcement} (Novice, Active) EXP: 0.1%, has been created.
... It wasn''t the first time I thought my power was sentient and fucking with me. After I''d gained {Night Vision} yesterday at least partly so that I could see how far along {Regeneration} was I now gained another ability. I didn''t feel like commenting on the name but I was fairly happy I''d learned how to evolve skills. I''m pretty sure as my feelings about that name got stronger it would evolve to a more serious name. I didn''t want to say the help with that name out loud so I put that aside for later. I still wasn''t able to seee inside myself or watch some weird energy flow around but I could feel a subtle energy inside. A quick experiment of imagining it flowing towards my hand seemed to have a response. The problem was that it was so weak I couldn''t quite be sure it wasn''t my imagination. It was already a bit past 7pm, over 5 hours had flown by during the trance I sunk into. I threw the hoodie and a load of other clothes into the washer. I wanted it cleaned so I could use it again tonight. It was a bit damaged but still the damage shouldn''t be noticeable at night. My toes seemed a bit behind schedule but not much. After pulling out a measuring tape they seemed to be roughly 9/10ths of my right toes. 11pm seemed a reasonable new deadline. As soon as 11pm came by I''d be able to go out and search for them while practicing skills. "Help Skills Window"
{Acting} (Novice, Passive) EXP 60.3% {Climbing} (Beginner, Passive) EXP: 18.5%. {Decrease Mental Presence} (Grandmaster, Passive) EXP: 0.9% {Dodging} (Novice, Active) EXP: 38.4%. {Hiding} (Advanced, Active) EXP: 75.2%. {Identification} (Novice, Active) EXP: 7.8%. {Increase Mental Sensing} (Advanced, Passive) EXP: 3.1% {Jumping} (Beginner, Passive) EXP: 61.2%. {Knife Fighting} (Beginner, Passive) EXP: 2.7%. {Mapping} (Intermediate, Active) EXP: 88.6%. {Memorization} (Intermediate, Passive) EXP: 91.5%. {Pain Tolerance} (Master, Passive) EXP: 72.8%. {Running} (Advanced, Passive) EXP: 99.9%. {Sense Bloodlust} (Master, Passive) EXP: 62.7%. {Sneaking} (Advanced, Active) EXP: 51.4%. {Swimming} (Beginner, Passive) EXP: 76.3%. {Throwing} (Advanced, Active) EXP: 98.2% {Unarmed Throws} (Novice, Active) EXP: 0.0%. {Walking} (Master, Passive) EXP: 38.5%. {Will Crafting} (Novice, Active) EXP: 86.3%
The obvious quick stat benefits would be from leveling up {Running}, {Mapping}, {Memorization}, {Throwing}, and {Will Crafting}. All 5 skills were close to leveling up and with a bit of planning I could likely level them within an hour after my toes were healed. The next thing was my abilities. {Night Vision} should level just from using it while out walking. {KI Reinforcement} might be a bit tricky but it''s not like I had to call it''s name out loud to use it. And last was my Resistances. I still had a ton of stuff for grinding Poison Resistance in my inventory space, along with lighters for Fire Resistance. I had plans for Light and Sleep, but Light would have to wait for the weekend. Sleep should be possible to unlock tonight if I stayed up late. Last was the thought that KI Resistance was within reach at least in theory. If I could get a firm understanding of {KI Reinforcement} then some kind of KI projection should be possible, and grinding a Resistance to it also possible. The other skill I really wanted to grind was {Sense Bloodlust}. The range on that was very large and gave me a lot more safety when dealing with people without Resonance like police. Or when dealing with psychics or others who could reduce their Resonance range like I could. To grind {Sense Bloodlust} fast at the Master level though I needed to be close to a few people with strong bloodlust directed at me, or near a large number of people with bloodlust in general. I started trying to sort through ideas for that when I was interupted by a window.
A quest has been created.
Jailbreak ver 2!
You quest is to stop the Jailbreak between 1am and 4am Wednesday, September 23rd, 2015.
Rewards: 1500 EXP, +3 to all Basic Stats for stopping the jailbreak.
Failure: Possible death.
You cannot refuse this quest.
The rewards were definitely pumped up this time and the wording was slightly different. I had to assume the difficulty or danger of the quest was harder than previous ones too. The thought popped into my head that being in jail was likely a perfect way to grind {Sense Bloodlust}. Not that I was going to allow that, but having a lot of people angry people around me would work. That lead to thoughts of sports games. Being at a Blue Jay game or Maple Leafs game when they are losing in front of thousands and thousands of fans would likely grind {Sense Bloodlust} up to Demi-god level, fast. The biggest games in town were the local team for the Ontario Hockey league. Next largest was likely University or College basketball or high school football. A few minutes browsing the internet showed various university teams playing games, but more importantly the opening game for the hockey season was Wednesday night. It should be an opportunity to grind some Ice Resistance too if I dressed lightly. I took Nilla out again and let her run around in dark along the driveway for a while while I sat on the pavement and played a bit of catch with her. I''d been concentrated so much on my RPG Growth power the last few weeks that while I took care of her basic needs I hadn''t played much with her. The last day and a half of recovering was the first really long time we''d spent together without grinding some skill or ability. By the time we were done it was 11pm and I had time to eat, shower, and finish the laundry before heading out. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ At 12am I examined my toes. They seemed full size and while the skin was slightly tender all the pain was gone. I redressed in slightly warm but clean clothes with the hoodie last. Nilla''s food and water was topped up and then I was off. Stepping outside felt good. {Night Vision} was activated immediately. I tried activating {KI Reinforcement} and imagining KI energy flowing through my feet into my toes. It was tough to be sure but it seemed to have activated. Next was {Will Crafting} as I went down my front steps. I infused Fire Resistance into my hoodie, pants, and finally shoes. The result was immediate upon the {Will Crafting} on my pants.
Through use of the skill {Will Crafting} it has reached Beginner level. {Will Crafting} (Beginner, Passive) EXP: 7.2%. You have gained 1 Intelligence. You have gained 1 Mental Stamina. You have gained 0.5 Wisdom. You have gained 50 EXP.
The small windows over my clothes said +10% Fire Resistance for a cost of 1 Psi per min per piece of clothing. Which seemed fairly low but not something I''d quibble about. I then opened my map and set out running for the mall. I was planning on searching an escape route this time. This time I wanted to take an almost direct route west along the rail line back to the bush near my place. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Forty-five minute later I was pretty much done mapping trails behind the mall after leveling up {Running}, {Mapping}, and {Memorization}, which were all close to leveling before. The stat gains were a welcome bonus after having to sacrifice stats the other night. Along the eastern edge of the mall ran a railway line. The line ran northeast and also southwest across the highway into the woods. I''d used it weeks ago to train but now it was my planned escape path. North of the railway line and mall, but south of the jail, was some light woods and several winding streets. A number of trails lead through people''s backyards to the mall, likely made by kids and others who didn''t care about trespassing and didn''t want to go the long way to the mall. I had never walked the trails before so using {Memorization} and {Mapping} to plan a few routes ahead of time while I waited seemed wise. During the previous jailbreak quest I ended up escaping the long way around, and the other day''s escape straight into the lake was even worse. Grabbing a pinecones off the ground to finish leveling {Throwing} as I walked was also a critical part of the plan. It was at 98.2% before I started throwing them at various targets like a particular branch or stump. If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement. I wanted to test a theory that I''d gain EXP faster in the skill by picking less aerodynamic ammunition, and trying things like bank shots off one target onto another. It was really hard to tell though since I hadn''t worked out an estimate of how fast normal throwing leveled. The idea seemed sound though, similar to how practicing bank shots improved a persons game in pool. In the end I leveled up {Throwing} a bit after 1am. Leveling up so many skills in just over an hour gave me a light headache, nothing like the crippling pain that happened back when my Mental Stamina was extremely low. "Help Throwing"
{Throwing} Novice - Throwing is 5% less tiring. Helps the Hand-Eye stat in improving accuracy. Beginner - Throwing is 10% less tiring. Helps the Hand-Eye stat in improving accuracy. Intermediate - Throwing is 15% less tiring. Helps the Hand-Eye stat in improving accuracy. Advanced - Throwing is 20% less tiring. Helps the Hand-Eye stat in improving accuracy. Master - Throwing is 25% less tiring. Helps the Hand-Eye stat in improving accuracy. Grandmaster - Throwing is 30% less tiring. Helps the Hand-Eye stat in improving accuracy. Can slightly change trajectories in midair. Requires 20 Willpower to enforce upon the world.
The help for {Throwing} up to now had been terribly boring and predictable. But after reaching Master I could see the help on the Grandmaster level. And that seemed to be a very nice upgrade. The image that immediately came to mind was someone jumping up to avoid a rock and me curving it slightly up to hit them in the nuts. I was more than a bit angry and fed up with these people after days of their shit and tonight seemed a good night to work out some of that anger on them. I headed towards the jail, crossing through a few people''s backyards as I tried to map at least one good route from the start of the trail to the street out front of the jail. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Around 1:15 I was a block from the jail and got my first surprise. The number of resonances I could sense from the jail was fine, but I could feel two others a bit to the east of the jail. I slowly headed east until I was on the opposite side of the road from the coffee shop I''d previously visited. The coffee shop was set back about 75 feet from the road but with my improved {Night Vision} and the backlighting I could see Firebringer and another man sitting in a booth. That was a pleasant surprise. I''d really wanted to find him before he found me and pay him back a bit. It might not be fair to blame someone being mind controlled for almost killing me but if I didn''t work off some of this hatred I''d definitely go squirrelly. Neither seemed in a hurry to do anything, they were just sipping coffee and talking occasionally. The first two questions that popped to mind were, could I find a good rock for Firebringer, and were they waiting on others to join them? It wasn''t until I started pondering those questions that what should be an obvious third question occurred to me. What was the power of the person with Firebringer? He wasn''t someone I''d felt before. It was at least possible he was even stronger than Firebringer. I''d thought on Firebringer''s power before and it seemed reasonable that he couldn''t use his power too close to himself. Even if he was immune to his own fireballs he shouldn''t be immune to things sent flying by the fireballs. For example if he blew up a car in the parking lot of the coffee shop he wasn''t likely immune to being cut by flying glass or metal. The next step was a waiting game. I could likely throw a rock through the windows and hit one of them but despite my vicious mood there was too many negatives. The window pane could change the trajectory of the rock and let it hit someone else, or even the glass could cut other customers and staff. That didn''t even count that I''d be hurting the business for no reason, especially considering I liked their glazed cinnamon rolls. Instead I moved into the shadows across the street and waited for them to come out while looking around for a decent rock, or four. Not too big, not too small, just right for Mr. Firebringer. The pain should break the mind control like it did with the others. In theory I was saving him. I couldn''t make myself believe that, but it was going to be my excuse if I had to explain myself. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ It was a long wait. I''d found some decent rocks, put on my gloves and even explored a few of the properties of the businesses on my side of the street to help plan getting away even better. Police patrols were heavy in the area but they had no real chance of noticing me with my {Hiding} skill. I could feel the bloodlust of them prowling around the jail regularly. I imagined that even if they couldn''t see a quest they must know that someone was likely to try a second jailbreak and cleanup loose ends. It was close to 3am when Firebringer picked up his phone and seemed to read something before typing a reply. Grabbing their coats they headed towards the exit to the parking lot between us. Carefully looking both ways, I dashed across the main road to their side of the street while pulling the best two rocks from my pocket and moving into the shadow of a SUV. They were out the door and a good 10 feet into the parking lot before I wound up and threw the first rock at Firebringer. At that point I was just outside the range he could feel me so the rock was a complete surprise. The rock caught him square in the stomach. The second rock was on it''s way and a second later and hit the leg of the second man before he''d fully realized what had happened to his partner. Quickly running at them I wanted one good kick with my KI enhanced foot on Firebringer then I''d let the police pick them up. It wasn''t until I was standing above Firebringer and pulling my foot back to give him a kick that I felt the bloodlust spike, not disappear. Firebringer was glaring at me from lying on his back and he was clearly not fuzzy from the mind control being broken. His partner had lost all bloodlust and was standing there confused with a complete lack of bloodlust. I let fly with the kick to Firebringer a lot harder than I''d originally planned. The original plan was more of a token kick to deal with some of my feelings. The kick I did was far more, my spike of adrenaline made me infuse all the KI I could into the kick at the last instant as I felt the fear he''d instilled, with the previous fireballs, into me. I could feel and hear his leg crack when my foot hit his thigh. It spun him like he was breakdancing a backspin. What happened next though shocked me. I was starting to worry that he would call down a strike on both of us. Instead glowing images started spawning around his head. A blue car, the house they were hiding in the other day, the jail, and what seemed like a youngish blonde girl. Each image was crisp and distinct despite being only a few inches tall. A quick glance around showed images around the heads of a couple frozen thirty feet away, an older woman at the window of the coffee shop and everyone else I could see nearby with one exception. Firebringer''s partner was standing confused beside us but no images popped above his head. It was immediately clear that whatever was happening was due to his power. As I was trying to figure out what that power was, Firebringer had stopped his spin and despite what must have been massive pain was reaching in my direction and screaming at me. As the night was lit up by fireballs falling I turned and ran. The fact that he wasn''t mind controlled threw my entire plan to hell. I''d have to hold him down or even kill him to stop him and there was no way I was going to hold him until the police showed up. The first strike exploded behind me, mostly missing me but it felt like 1 Fireball hit me. I felt the explosive blast and a strong push. I could feel the clothing I''d enchanted with {Will Crafting} pulling PSI energy from me to resist the flames. The hoodie, shirt and pants damped down the fire damage to the point where my innate Fire Resistance was able to handle it, with only a bit of a burn. The problem was apparent a few seconds later. The back of the hoodie, shirt and pants over my ass literally exploded into lint. Somehow resisting the fireball used up the durability of the clothing. Half of the back of my underwear was left but my pants were falling down and the hoodie and shirt were trying to slide down my arms. Grabbing my pants I kept running. I could hear the couple screaming in fear as I dashed between the parked cars. Another strike came down but missed by a wide margin. From the corner of my eye I caught the sight of a small car basically exploding as the fireballs ripped it to shreds. I was sure he''d missed so badly because he couldn''t see me any more from the ground. Using {Dodge} and {Running} I was across the street and running through the back lot of a small engine repair business while more strikes came down far behind me. It wasn''t until I was a block away that I felt somewhat safe. At the same time though I finally felt more resonances behind me. It seemed like Firebringer had been coming outside to meet up with others. There was no way they could have reacted within 2 minutes otherwise. My timing was lucky as hell, if they had shown up and more of them were not mind controlled I could have been surrounded in that parking lot. I felt the resonances starting to split up and head in my direction, but they had literally no chance of catching me. I had an escape route, they barely had a clue which direction I''d left, they couldn''t sense me, and even if they could they wouldn''t be able to drive their cars through the trails. There was no way they could carry out the jailbreak now. Not with how many cops were likely responding to the explosion a block away from the jail. Another five minutes and I was streaking across the bypass at the railroad crossing south of the mall. Ten minutes after that I was at the exit of the bush a few blocks from home. From there the only exceptional thing that happened was {Night Vision} reaching Intermediate while sneaking through people''s backyards half naked. It took close to an hour to cross 3 blocks since I had to wait for no nearby cars at each street I crossed. At home I checked my burn, which was very light, changed clothes, and took Nilla out to poop. I seemed to have gotten away safely. At 4:01am I got the quest reward.
Your quest ''Jailbreak ver 2!'' was successfully completed. You have gained +3 to all basic stats. You have gained 1500 EXP.
That was followed up by a level up window which I waived away without reading. I really didn''t care about the level. The most important issues were that some of the enemies were willing participants, not mind controlled, and thereby far, far more dangerous than I thought. I''d only found out the other day that they were likely being controlled and the control could be removed by pain, and now that helpful fact had been crushed along with my hopes to end this all fast. The other issue was even more terrifying. What images popped up around my head and was Firebringer able to tell anyone about them. I didn''t clue into it in the heat of moment while trying not to die but I doubted I resisted having images of my life float above my head. Browsing through the list of powers the only one that seemed to match was Light Mind. There wasn''t too much I could do about it though. I packed a bag in case I needed to run, put my wallet in it in case I needed a hotel, and went to bed after a quick snack. I felt more rational after having gotten some of my hate and stress out. And I was further ahead, there was no way either of the two would be attacking me anytime soon. I''d deal with whatever happened next as it came. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Author''s Note: Sorry everyone for the long pause between chapters. I''ve had a lot of things going on the last while, none of them super bad but few good. February is likely going to be very busy for me but I''ll try to write more anyway. I just can''t promise any particular schedule until the weather gets better in the spring. I''m running out the door for work in a few minutes but I''ll try to fix any mistakes or reply to comments when I get back from work in about 6-7 hours.