I awoke roughly an hour later by system time, feeling refreshed with just a ghost of that horrid pain which had assaulted me. "System, what the hell was that," I said aloud, still laying on my back in the wet grass.

User Zerial was identified by the System as an anomaly. The System attempted to course-correct by terminating the User, but was halted from it's course by ERROR SUBSPACE ENTITY DETECTED.

Oh. Oh my. "What the hell do you mean, you tried to terminate me?" I shouted, sitting up suddenly and checking myself over.

User Zerial was awakened 20,000 standard years before the planned awakening of Aastarus. In an effort to correct the error, the System deemed the quickest possible solution to be a termination of your user status. Sadly, once integrated, users do not often survive the system purge. With the intersession of ERROR SUBSPACE ENTITY DETECTED, your system termination was halted. This has resulted in several actions being taken against you, and more than 57 million complaints being filed with the System Authority in the past hour. Due to this intersession on your behalf, the system has had to dedicate more potential into your region of space in order to speed up this star sector's integration. Instead of the previously planned 20,000 years, this planet, along with 705,653 other planets and asteroids in the sector will now be integrated in the next eight years.

User, you have received a new title! Title gained: The Attention of the Ancients

The Attention of the Ancients

User, you have managed to draw the attention of an ancient and terrible

being, who has interceded directly on your behalf. This has resulted in an

irrevocable change to your destiny. 'Ware the Ancients, user.

Status: Destiny of Potential (User's destiny is currently undefinable)

Uhh. That seemed not good. I sat in the grace for a few minutes, reading and rereading the displayed text before I angrily waved it away. It's not like I could do much about it. I stood from the grass and my system reminded me once again to assign my attribute points. Okay, lets see what it is about.

Please assign an attribute for level one. Your choices are to add .01 to (Str, Agi, Dex, End, Int, Wis). Note, Lore cannot be raised by assigning Attribute points without first selecting a class from the Lore-master tree.

Okay... Well, I was already 20-50% better in most aspects than your average person on Aastarus. My endurance was crazy, though I would give anything to take a peak at what Master Roderick would be at.

User can identified non-users with the identify skill. To acquire the skill, User Zerial must do his best to identify everything within sight until he begans to look deeper.

Oh. Oh yes. That was going to be my very first thing, my very first skill. System, what is the best skill for me to improve, I thought to the disembodied voice in my head.

User is not allowed to receive assistance in selection of attribute assignments directly from the system. Querying user forums... The standard recommendation from 356,405,595 compiled results concurs that raising your stats as much as possible physically in your current environment before assigning attributes is recommended. Those compiled results recommend that a user identify the hard planetary limit and train to reach it, as then they will be capable of limit breaking the world space-time guardian's hard presets.

Okay, that sounded good. I wasn't used to taking the easy path, and I wanted to be the best of the best. If that meant I had to train to the peak of physical perfection on Aastarus, then that is what I would do. System, disable level notifications until level 10, I thought to the system, and the angry flashing at the bottom of my vision went away. I went to see about my killed buck, and saw that my arrow had pierced right where it's heart should have been. I guess the training could begin now, and with a small grunt of effort I hefted the 100 pound deer onto my shoulders and began to trek back through the woods towards the castle.

Castle Heart, 1346 Local Time

I made excellent time back to the castle, arriving faster than when I had left. I had somehow managed to cut almost a whole hour off of my return trip, though I arrived heaving and sweating, my back cramped and my body aching from hefting the dead animal through the rough forests and countryside of the Hartlands. I made my way to the butchery as I entered the castle gates and dropped my kill off with them, instructing them to mount the antlers and send them to my room. They thought I was proud of the kill, but I was just commemorating my near annihilation at the hands of the system.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

" Well, look who decided to skip training to take a stroll through the countryside," a brutal voice cut through the din of a castle behind me. I froze in my tracks and slowly turned to face Roderick, already resigning myself to not getting a nap in before dinner tonight. If I would be lucky enough to receive dinner. "Come," Roderick ordered abruptly and led me towards the interior of castle heart. I followed him through the second and then the third gate of the castle, acknowledging salutes and bows with a nod of my head. Soon we came to Gerald's private practicing yards, where Roderick stopped and faced me while drawing his blade. Master Dorman waited there and waited for me to draw my blade before coming over to magically blunt both blades.

"Let's try and make some use of today," Roderick said simply while Dorman left. Without a word Roderick struck forward like a snake. He raised the blade suddenly across his body and gave the tip of the blade a little kick to get the blade moving even faster, and I had to adjust my planned block and parry to allow the sword to slide off my blade instead of clashing like I had intended to. Roderick halted his blade immediately just before it hit my blade and grasped the back of his hilt, shoving it upward and driving the tip of his sword over my defense and towards my face. I rotated towards Roderick's right side, neatly side-stepping the stab and bringing my own blade in with a short vicious chop at hip level, forcing the man to back up a step and then block the follow up horizontal backhanded slash.

The fight ended in a heartbeat as faster than my eye could follow Roderick batted my sword down and then reversed his strike, catching me in the face with his fist and knocking me on my ass. He halted there with his blade point at my throat, hovering for a moment before moving it away and allowing me to stand. Once I was on my feet Roderick faced me again and raised his blade so that his hilt was held out and to the side with his blade pointed inward towards me. I brought my blade back and to the side, grasping it in both hands and waited. Roderick suddenly kicked sand into my eyes and I blindly brought my sword in for a block, surprised when I felt like I was course correcting without my eyesight, and the jarring impact of his strike stung my palm. I opened my eyes in time to see that he had withdrawn from the initial strike and was going to jab his sword into my face.

I felt as if his movements had been slowed down and I easily brought my blade up and deflected it, then deflected the followup spinning backhand attack and the return stroke. All of it happened as if Roderick was going in slow motion to let me practice my movements, but I noticed that his muscles were tensed with unrestrained strength and fury. His eyes were wide and then I watched his pupils dilate in slow motion as he narrowed his eyelids and suddenly his movements seemed to speed back up to their regular speed.

I deflected a third horizontal backstroke and batted his incoming fist aside with my own open hand, leading my hilt forward, causing him to drop a leg and slide under my strike before popping up in a spin and bringing his blade around for a strike at my back, only to meet my blade as I had halted my hilt strike and instead drove my sword up and over my shoulder to catch the strike that i just simply knew would come. The moment I felt his blade contact mine I tilted my hands and slid it off, twisting my shoulders feet and hips to face him rapidly and bringing my sword up before halting it a bare centimeter before his throat.

Roderick watched me in stunned silence before he started to laugh in his tortured voice. "Gods damned boy! Where the hell have you been hiding all that skill?" he questioned me wonderingly.

"It just seemed like you were moving too slow at first, and then when you sped up it seemed like you had begun to move more normally," I said, confused myself. Wasn't he taking it easy on me?

"No, I wasn't holding back any more than normal at first, and then when you deflected a strike while blind I decided to increase the tempo a little more. I see I will have to give you a little bit more of my speed and strength so that you don't get a big head!" He laughed again, which sounded a lot like forks on dinner plates. "Again!" He called and I raised my sword once more...

Zerial's Chambers, 1759 local time

Roderick kicked the ever loving shit out of me. Every fight started out the same, with him using a little bit of his speed to maintain a steady pace before ramping it up again and again until it was all I could do to keep his blade away from my body. My arms, thighs, back, shoulders, chest, and hands all hurt both from the impact of stopping his brutally strong blows and from when I failed to stop his blow and caught it directly on my armored body. Roderick was impressed with me, probably for the first time ever, and promised that he would increase our training until I was able to match him blow for blow. He seemed genuinely excited for the first time that I could ever recall. Master Dorman had watched me curiously the entire time, still present to ensure that neither of us killed the other. He said that the duels between Roderick and I had reminded him of duels between two mage swordsmen. Extremely tight and fast engagements with the ringing of steel becoming a near constant sound as we traded blows and parry's until Roderick inevitably seemed to get even faster or stronger and slipped past or blew away my defenses.

Congratulations User Zerial, you have gained 5% utilization of the Sword Mastery section of your Weapons Mastery tree. This means that you'll be able to utilize roughly 5% of your flow-state for as long as endurance and stamina lasts.

Uhh. I guess that's what that is? Interesting. What is flow-state?

Flow-state describes the minds incredible ability to focus so intensely on a task that it excludes all external stimuli not relevant to the task, and allows you a greater degree of reaction speed as your brain's processes are freed for the task at hand. Flow-state allows the user to perform at the peak of the percentage they have unlocked. The system notes that Knight Commander Roderick fights in a near constant state of flow-state. The estimated percentage shown by non-user Roderick is calculated to be within the 30-40 percentile range, though that number could change as it is unlikely he needed anything further to defeat you. In fact, it is likely that he was actively utilizing his own natural version of flow-state to keep from accidentally murdering you, hampering his overall efficiency.

Oh. Well there goes my sudden boost of confidence... I decided to have the servants fill me up a bath and scrub myself raw before going to bed for the night. Dinner could wait until tomorrow.