Name: Elliot Dresmr

Level: 1

Occupation: none

Class: None

Strength: 46

Vitality: 10

Dexterity: 4 (+2)

Agility: 8 (+4)

Intelligence: 49

Wisdom: 8

Charm: 10 (+5)

Luck: 2

Skills: Strength of a Tyrant (Passive), Cunning of a snake (passive) Talent of the insane (passive) Pk Memory- AA “Elliot Dresmr” (passive, concealed) Swordlust (passive)(active)

Unused stat points: 3 (+3)

Quest: Train the sword until your arms grow numb. You’ll receive one free stat point as a reward.

Elliot had been sitting on the bed for an hour now, and occasionally he’d see his sister peek in from worry. He knew why she looked that way, to her he might have just been sitting motionless, staring at nothing. That wasn’t the case. One thing he learned from studying the status details was that he had hit the jackpot when it came to the skill “Cunning of a snake”. Intelligence was apparently one of the hardest stats to get, since it required a higher mental cognition.

Intelligence: How quickly you can perceive a situation. Struggle valiantly to increase this status by undertaking impossibly hard and mind-numbing challenges. Increases speed and power of your magical powers.

Honestly, he was quite surprised to see his intelligence so high when he’d first seen it, chalking it up to his age. He learned quite quickly that it wasn’t the case when he pressed on the word ‘status’. On average, every human being had every one of their status at ten. Someone who was smarter or slower would mean a difference of maybe 3 to four points. His intelligence was almost twice beyond average. At first, he considered himself a genius until he read the status of ‘wisdom’

Wisdom: The knowledge and life you’ve lived affect this status. Live a well-meaning life of study and piety, and increase your resistance to magical power, including your own.

This had to do with a person’s mental fortitude and knowledge of the world. It was… quite below average. At first, he consoled himself by telling himself that an eight wasn’t too bad… Until he remembered the first moment he’d read his stats. A four. It had been a four. Before the memories of the seven-year-old child gave him an edge up to 8 wisdom, he’d had such a pitiful number. He tossed and turned in his bed as he desperately tried to deny it, but... In his seventeen years of life, he had gained barely enough wisdom to compete with a 10-year-old child.

Aah… Life truly had a way of hurting someone where they least expected. He briefly considered smothering himself with the pillow underneath him before accepting the grim reality. …He really wanted to pour his unused stat points into the stat, at least enough where he would be considered average… It wouldn’t do to be so reckless, though. He knew he had worse stats to take care of. Specifically, his dexterity and agility. He wouldn’t touch luck for now, not unless it actually mattered. The status’ description was vague and not at all helpful, as well.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

Luck: The driving force of all good things in the world. Live a life of karmic beauty, and it will increase or decrease on its own terms.

Decrease my ass, what was Elliot supposed to do if he spent a point on it, only to see it drop back down to the same level!? Screw that. He supposed that perhaps he would spend some points on it later when he had a surplus, but for now, he'd let it stay where it was. His agility was low, but man… his dexterity was awful, almost pitifully so. When he read the status, he understood why.

Dexterity: Your control over your own body. As your body changes and grows, so will your ability to control it. Controls the potency and reduces the cons of your skills, both magic and otherwise.

He was only a child at the moment. Of course there was no way he’d have control over a body that was constantly shifting and growing. He sighed, realizing where he was going to have to put his status points. Now all he had to do was figure out how to do it. Was it that all he had to do to raise was to think about it? ‘Put all my points in dexterity.’ He had six points, apparently, so this would make his dexterity above average. He was sorely mistaken as he read the screen, however.

3 status points have been used on ‘dexterity.’ Because of your skill “Talent of the insane” 3 status points have been added at random.

+1 wisdom

+1 charm

+1 strength

He looked at the screen with a mixture of excitement and disappointment. On one hand, this meant that he had much less control over his body than he assumed. On the other… “Talent of the insane really is an insane skill…” Status points were status points, he had been meaning to raise them all up, eventually. Though, the ones that were chosen at random really weren’t the ones he needed to fix… He wondered if his poor luck stat had anything to do with it. No matter. He had to go check out the changes to his body. Free points in his strength also helped in his motivation. Standing up, he headed towards the training hall in his house, whistling a merry tune.

One never realizes what they had been missing out on until they gain it. He jumped over the training dummy with incredible core strength, nimbly slicing the wooden sword across the neck. The landing was a bit shaky, but he managed to land on both his feet so he was quite proud. He chuckled to himself in the empty training hall, amused at himself for doing such a showy stunt. He’d become bored using the wooden sword for some reason, something he’d never had felt in his past life.

The wooden sword just felt… odd. Clunky. As he slashed the dummy from the left and followed with a kick to where the knee would be, he realized what was wrong. He felt insane for thinking this, but the sword just didn’t have the same feel as a real one. When he sliced the dummy, he expected it to bleed, expected it to fight back. Whenever it didn’t he felt a tiny, insignificant pang of disappointment. But the disappointment added up.

He turned to the small barrel full of different-sized, real swords that had been dulled. The original Elliot wouldn’t have been able to carry one, but him now? He smiled, remembering that he had the strength of almost five men now. Even his past, 17-year-old self would probably tremble under his current kid body. He meandered to the dull swords and checked each one out, before coming across one that made him feel right, strong.

It had been on the heavier side and was almost as big as him. It was too heavy for someone as light as him, too cumbersome. But the swordlust in him almost made him feel dizzy as he looked at it. He swung it downwards and lurched back as his whole body tried to fall alongside it. His mind was buzzing as he thought of ways to use it properly, all of them ending with a simple solution. Just fall with the swing. If he couldn’t be the anchor that held the ship, then he’d be the calm waves that ensured it a safe journey.

He swung again, shifting his feet so that he’d move forward and continue the swing, all he did was fall on his back, though. He laughed at his own incompetence. It felt like the first time he held a sword. Incompetent and rough, but with it came a sense of progress that he could never truly feel from anything else. As he trained, he’d been so focused that he hadn’t even noticed his mother, staring through the slightly opened door. A look of concern mixed with pride on her face.

Things progressed smoothly after that. He no longer got in trouble with his mother, only ever staying in the training hall to sharpen his skills while also occasionally sparring with Keyla in order to keep his instincts sharp. He lost beautifully, of course. He had tried to convince Keyla to change her violent ways as well, but the girl had more fire in her heart than he could put out. In the end, it fell into a lifestyle of training the sword and increasing his status.

Like that, two years had passed.