When Ru Ning opened his eyes, the first thing he noticed was the transparent screen floating above his face.
This transparent screen looked like one of those status screens one would see in video games.
Name: Ru Ning
Class: Alchemist
Status: Commoner
Title: Abnormal Prodigy
Level: 1
HP: 50
MP: 100
Physical Strength: 3
Endurance: 4
Agility: 6
Magic Power: 11
Resistance: 35
{Tier 0} [Active: Create Poison] [Cost: ~]
{Tier 3} [Passive: Poison Mastery(Beginner)]
{Tier 10} [Passive: Poison Immunity]
“What is this screen? And what happened to the experiment?”
Ru Ning sat up and looked around only to find himself in the middle of what seemed like a forest.
“Where am I? How did I get there?”
Many questions appeared in his head. He was in his lab experimenting with his newest creation just moments ago, so how did he get here? He couldn’t remember what happened after the experiment went wrong and exploded on him, but one thing was for sure — he didn’t die from the explosion and instead appeared here.
He checked his body and everything seemed fine. There was no injury, not even a scratch on his body. However, he could feel that there was something different about his body. What this change was, he wasn’t sure, but he knew that there was something different about his body.
He felt an unknown presence of strength, a feeling he didn’t have before the explosion.
However, despite being lost and clueless, Ru Ning didn’t feel fear or nervousness. There was only unwavering calmness in his heart.
“This floating screen is my only clue as of now.”
Thus, Ru Ning began to seriously inspect the screen that has been floating before his eyes since he woke up.
The first thing that came to mind when looking at the screen was that it looked awfully familiar, but he wasn’t able to identify what at glance. Although Ru Ning is a young man who is still qualified to be a high school student, he did not do what others at his age would normally do, such as, going to school, gaming, and hanging out with friends after school. Instead, he would occupy himself in the lab that was given to him by the government to experiment on things — most of which are related to poison.
Ru Ning was recognized as a prodigy by the government, hence why they would supply such a young man with a lab, even allowing him to experiment with poisons. However, because of his status and the weird subject he chose to study at his age, people would label him as the ‘weird prodigy’ or ‘abnormal prodigy’.
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“Ah, I remember now. This is one of those ‘status screens’ that are usually shown in video games if I recall correctly.”
Ru Ning stretched his fingers to touch his name on the screen.
[Name — Your name.]
Then he moved to touch ‘Class’.
[Class — Your occupation predetermined by fate before birth. Cannot be changed.]
[Status — Your status in this world.]
[Title — An achievement approved by the World System.]
[Level — Your level. Increases with experience gained by killing others with levels.]
[HP — Your life force. Death upon depletion to 0.]
[MP — Your total magic points. Required to use magic.]
[Physical Strength — The strength of your raw physical power.]
[Endurance — How well you can defend against Physical Attacks.]
[Agility — Calculates your swiftness, sharpness, and stamina.]
[Magic Power — The strength of your magic. Higher Magic Power is required for higher Tier magic.]
[Resistance — How well you can resist magic and ailments.]
[Skill: Create Poison — A Tier 0 Active Skill that requires activation. Creates poison according to the user’s command. The power and MP Cost depends on the strength of the poison created. There is no limitation on what the user can create as long as the MP requirement is fulfilled.]
[Skill: Poison Mastery(Beginner) — A Tier 3 Passive Skill that requires no activation. Increases the Tier of all poison attacks by one, but also increases the MP Cost of these Skills by 10%.]
[Skill: Poison Immunity — A Tier 10 Passive Skill that requires no activation or MP and is always active. Grants the user full immunity towards any sort of toxin, negates all poison damage and consumes it to increase the user’s overall strength, and reduces the MP Cost of all poison-based Skills by 50%]
Ru Ning got a grasp of his status screen after carefully reading through the entire thing. In short, this status screen represented his own strength and weakness, and other information about him.
“But...why does it appear like this? Am I in a game, or this is another world?” Ru Ning recalls the popular anime and novels he would see being mentioned on television every once in a while, and this situation is usually the focus in these categories.
After thinking about it for some time, Ru Ning decides to stop thinking about this all together. He is already here and he has no clue as to why this happened, so there wasn’t much point in thinking about it.
The most important thing right now is to survive, so he began thinking of ways to live.
There are only a few things he believed are required to live, and he prioritized food and water first, with a place to dwell second.
Ru Ning began to walk blindly around the forest. He didn’t know where he was going, but without a map or someone to ask directions, what other choice did he really have?
“These trees are weird, they’re very tall and wide, nearly touching the clouds from my point of view. I do not remember my world having these.”
“These weird-looking plants, too. I have never seen or heard of anything like this…”
Ru Ning would stop walking to inspect whatever he was unfamiliar with that came to sight, which was nearly everything he came across.
And the longer he traveled along with the foreign things he saw, the more convinced that he was not in his homeland, Earth.
~Rustle
Suddenly, the thick bushes beside Ru Ning who was inspecting this purple flower trembled.
Alerted, Ru Ning instantly distanced himself from the moving bush.
“Who’s there?” he called out.
The bush moved even more violently after his voice echoed.
“!!!”
In a speed that Ru Ning was unable to react, a long shadow leaped from within the bush and towards his direction.
And before he realized what was happening, pain appeared around his neck.
-5 HP
“A snake!?”
Ru Ning grabbed the rainbow-colored tail out of pure instinct and yanked it away from him, causing a small chunk of his neck to be torn out by the sharp fangs of the snake.
-15 HP
The rainbow-colored snake landed a few feet away from him, but it did not attack him for the second time and only glared at him with its red eyes, as though it was sure that it didn’t need to attack again.
Ru Ning covered the pain on his neck with his hand, his head filled with sweat.
-1 HP
-1 HP
-1 HP
He could see his HP slowly getting depleted in the corner of his eyes; it was probably because of the blood leaking from his wound.
Luckily for Ru Ning, the snake’s strength lay not in its biting strength but something else, or else he would’ve lost all his HP the moment the snake bit his neck.
[Poison Immunity activated — Tier 4 Rainbow Venom has been negated and consumed.]
[Rainbow Venom has been added to your Poison Knowledge.]
[Rainbow Venom has permanently increased all stats by 30%. This effect can only be applied once.]
The HP depletion stopped after the skill activated, and Ru Ning could feel a new strength awakening inside his body.