Chapter 3: Jane's Adventures in Experimentation

The remainder of the day proceeded as expected. Bland food for lunch, more exhausting classes. This did give Jane quite a bit of time to think up her after school activities, however.

She came up with a list of things she wanted to check.

* The System can remove desired information from above people's head on command, can it display other information as desired?

* Acting was learned by performing the necessary actions, can other skills be learned this way?

* By reading a book that discusses a skill, can it be learned without having to perform the actions?

* Can skills offer boosts to stats? By direct addition, or augmenting based on percentage.

* Can stats be lost? If so, can they be recovered over time without having to re-earn?

Some of these she doubted that she'd find out for awhile. The last item she already suspected was true. She wasn't a very active person up until this point in her life. She was certain that her muscles had atrophied and resulted in a loss of stats. So, unless she experienced some kind of artificial debuff, lost stats were most likely gone permanently if effort wasn't put in to getting them back. The same goes with stats which aren't used regularly.

Jane also wanted to know if her body would heal like a game character. Would a stab wound miraculously close as her health regenerated? She wasn't in a hurry to check this out. She'd likely find out if she ever got a scratch. Which was likely to happen if she joined her Mom in exercise. If this were true, she'd need to make sure to have a plausible excuse should anyone see her have an accident and then see her healed body later.

Leaving the school, Jane decided to head to the library. She had neglected self-help and education material. Now, however, it suited her purposes perfectly. Before she went there, she was going to spend some time at the park. It was on the way, after all.

After the 15 minute walk, Jane found a bench near a flowerbed surrounding the pond. Looking to the left and right, Jane made sure that no one was going to be listening. Her first experiment was about to take place, and she didn't want interruptions to ask who she was talking to.

"It would be great if I could view my Health and Mana without having to pull up the Player Information menu," Jane said to the air. She waited. Two minutes passed and nothing happened.

System, please display my Health and Mana so that I can see it as I move. She asked in her head. Nicely, in case it decided to get sarcastic with her. Shortly after the request, a red and blue pair of bars appeared along with their numerical values inside the bars. Handy, thanks! She shouted I her mind.

So, direct requests are needed if I plan on affecting anything related to the system. Unless the system is already paying attention to my actions. Or, perhaps an Administrator was watching me this morning when I made a remark about the information above my head. Jane shook her head and decided not to bother with that train of thought.

Her next request was for a 24-hour clock to be placed under the Health and Mana bars. She didn't want to bother moving around if she needed to check the time, after all. 15:23 quickly appeared before her eyes in a nice transparent overlay.

Out of curiosity, she asked to see a virtual representation of a computer monitor and keyboard, but that didn't work. Something for her to experiment with later. The clock had to get data from somewhere to stay current.

The next item on her list was to create a skill. The most obvious and useful one was to obtain Identify. This is why she chose her location. Jane spent the next 10 minutes carefully studying flowers; wondering what information they contained, their height and texture, name and species. Anything she could think of that might show up with an Identify skill.

Nothing.

Jane decided to give it another 20 minutes. It might require a set duration to make the system pay attention to the intention. After five minutes she got her wish.

[table=white]New Skill: Observation – Beginner 1By watching the world around you suspiciously, you have learned how to glean information out of the most innocuous of details. With each level, your insights reveal more information about your surroundings.[/table]

Jane frowned. Not quite what I was hoping for, but I'll take it. She thought. She knew the system was going to mess with her again. Looking at the flower, she thought, Observe.

[table=white]Mysterious PlantJudging by this plant's location and your observations, this is likely a flower. By all indications, it's a red flower that has recently been urinated on.[/table]

Sighing, Jane got up and decided to continue on to the library. She didn't notice the urine, so at least that's something she had no knowledge about. She did make sure to watch for dogs, though. At least she hoped it was a dog that came by to mark its territory. After this morning, she couldn't be sure.

Observe.

Along the way, she casted her new skill on a variety of objects. She even learned that she could activate it with both the word Observe and Identify. She was beginning to think that the system worked more on intent than commands, as a normal game would.

Jane waited for a moment. Huh, after that kind of realization, I was half-expecting an Intelligence or Wisdom stat increase. The system is getting sneaky. Jane thought to herself.

Entering the library a few minutes later, Jane stood for a moment at the entrance. She hadn't been here in months. Ever since she got involved with Landless Wonders she had no need to come here to spend her time. If she needed a book for school she would just use the library there.

Walking towards the back, she passed by the reception and check-out desk and was greeted by the Librarian. "Oh, if it isn't Miss Blackthorne. I haven't seen you in awhile, Jane. You missed several new additions." The elderly woman stated.

Stopping, Jane turned to her and replied after a moment's shock. "Hello Mrs. Pettigrew. I was busy with school and also decided to give one of those popular games a try that my classmates were raving about for a few years." Jane paused conspiratorially for a moment. "I used all the experiences from the books here to turn their world on its head, then disappeared as suddenly as I arrived. They still don't even know it was me since I used a different name and appearance."

"Good for you, dear. You know I'm not much for all the new electronics, but I think I'd have joined you if you told me you were going to do something like that. This place is nearly dead except for a few old-timers like myself." Mrs. Pettigrew confided.

"I'll be by more often, then. I decided I'd try the other sections now." Jane said sympathetically. She truly did like the woman.

"I'll be looking forward to it, dear. Come talk a little on your way out if you have the time." The woman said as she turned back to her book.

Jane nodded and continued on to the self-help section, shaking her head at what she saw above the woman's head.

Elanor Pettigrew <> <>

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At least now Jane had some semblance of a plan to get information on the supernatural. The woman knew her for years and knew her habits. Discussing the project had fabricated to her chemistry teacher and the resources she received, while letting her name drop, might turn something up and appear as harmless to the elderly woman. She'd wait a few days, though. She was going to search the Internet as well to make the story more believable.

Still, how did I never notice? Jane wondered as she arrived at the two long shelves in the back of the room.

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The local library was not large, but it wasn't small, either. Jane was starting to suspect it was more of a hide-away for the supernatural than a village. Likely a number of those people wouldn't want to draw electronic notice by scouring the Internet for their needs if they didn't have to.

She also saw a few affiliations from classmates, which supported this hypothesis. Not many, but more than 10%. Which was statistically large for a settlement this size in what should be a very rare segment of the population. Especially within three years of her age.

Jane decided to explore that later. For now, she was going to try learning skills from books. At the very least, maybe she'll pick up a skill that made memory retention from read material better. This would be invaluable in the future.

She saw books on spirituality. She'd explore those further in a few days, but did pick up a book on yoga and another on meditation. These she could do in her home and start the foundation with Mrs. Pettigrew as well as her mother.

The other books, she'd leave here after she was done. Based on her stat descriptions, even if she learned a skill it would likely perform better if she fully understood the mechanics. So fully reading a book and using it as a guide to perform the skill would offer a greater chance of success.

Yoga and meditation were all she wanted for physical activities at the moment with exercise. One would begin slowly raising her Strength and Vitality while mainly raising her Dexterity. The other would probably raise her Intelligence and Wisdom. She'd come back for a Tai Chi and Qi Gong set of books later once her body, mind, and soul were in better shape. She had a feeling she could work all her stats with those as well as probably her Luck.

The self-help section had a lot to choose from. She decided to focus on something tangible. Cooking was the obvious choice. There were dozens of books on it, so she had a better chance of finding a way to activate the learning of a skill, as well as it being of use later in life.

Jane was through her seventh book before she finally received a prompt.

[table=white]New Skill: Cooking – Beginner 1You have decided to join the lovers of domesticity and gastronomy in this age-old art. True masters of Cooking understand that food is as much an art as it is a science splashed with a dab of magic and love. Meals you prepare have a 1% chance of being edible per level, regardless of your effort.[/table]

Wow, thanks for the faith System. Jane shook her head. At least she had three skills now and proved she could gain them by studying books. How many per skill was the question. Most of those she read were recipes, with a couple going over the basics.

Jane also noticed that the skill descriptions seemed to mimic the method she went about to learn the skill. Do they change based on her understanding? She would have to see as she leveled them. If this is the case, than they'd likely evolve as well. Maybe she could still get an Identify skill from Observation.

[table=white]Intelligence +1[/table]

Thanks system. I appreciate your confidence. She chagrined in her mind. At least she knew she was on the right track with that little bit of sarcasm from it.

She spent the afternoon reading through more self-help books and didn't pick up any additional skills. At least from the non-physical section. She didn't bother with areas like plumbing and carpentry. She wasn't sure she wanted plumbing as a skill. Carpentry she might just pick up, but for now it'd be suspicious to have people see her carving blocks of wood with a knife if she didn't set up a proper set of events leading up to it.

Through this, she learned that she'd have to read a variety of books about a topic from multiple perspectives to gain a skill. She could have probably learned some skill related to psychology if she took those self-help books related to weight-loss and motivation and coupled them with some textbook that covered them as well, since the ones she read didn't delve into the hows and whys at an academic level. This is why she could learn Cooking, it discussed multiple aspects of the skill as a whole.

With this in mind, she decided to pick up the rest of the yoga and meditation books to check out and take home with her. She could probably learn both just from the single book as they were thorough, but she wanted to see if additional perspectives made it any easier to perform.

At check-out, Mrs. Pettigrew merely raised at eyebrow at her choice of books. Jane shrugged her shoulder and bid her a good afternoon.

The walk home was uneventful. Her parents wouldn't be home for over an hour, so she decided to start with the meditation books. It was a toss-up between her room or the backyard. She finally went with the backyard because it offered the most room when she got up to try yoga.

As expected, the first book did give her the skill for meditation. It was after reading all of the books that she confirmed her suspicions for skill evolution. Well, it wasn't really an evolution. It did raise her level, though.

[table=white]Meditation – Beginner 5Through calming your mind and centering yourself, you've found the benefits of self-reflection and introspection. Stillness brings oneness with the Universe and all life within it. True masters of Meditation can sustain themselves solely on the energy of the Universe.

Each level increase in Meditation brings a 1% quicker recovery rate of Mana per minute while meditating.

Gains towards Intelligence, Wisdom, and Luck have a chance to slightly increase while meditating.[/table]

While she was disappointed that meditating didn't bring definite gains towards her stats, she accepted it as too much to hope for. After all, people in meditation temples spent years doing it regularly. There'd likely be many supernaturals birthed if stat gains were given out like candy from skills. At least it confirmed that stat gains were possible.

She also smiled at the hint in the skill description that she might be able to substitute sleep and food for Meditation. She doubted it'd be that easy, but it was something to work towards. Stat gains for a straight eight hours per day. Eventually she'd max out the skill levels and gain a surplus of stat points in the process.

She next started reading through the Yoga books. It was the same as before, the single book rewarded the skill and the following ones raised the level due to increased understanding. Only, this one actually gave her a percentage of chance for a stat increase while performing the skill. Which was handy.

[table=white]Yoga – Beginner 3By understanding that the body is an extension of the soul, you have found that through Yoga you can strengthen the body. True masters of Yoga have gained spiritual awakening and insights as they incorporate Meditation in their practice.

Each level increase in Yoga brings a 1% quicker recovery rate of Mana per minute while performing the skill.

Gains towards Strength, Vitality, Dexterity, and Luck have a chance to slightly increase while performing Yoga at rates of 0.3%, 0.3%, 0.8%, and 0.1% respectively.[/table]

The skill description also offered hints of how it could be evolved. She had a feeling that Meditation would remain a stand-alone skill, but any future skills that incorporated slow movements focused on self-reflection would evolve and merge with Yoga into a new one with better stat percentages. Should she ever reach a level where she can perform Meditation while moving, she'd be able to work all stats at once.

Perhaps this was also why the skill hinted that Meditation could sustain the body. Hunger and physical exertion would be offset if she could do the skills at the same time. Though, she'd probably pay a price once she stopped if she did it for days at a time. Her parents would also stop her before she could test it.

Jane only had a few minutes before her parents got home. So, she'd focus on training stats tomorrow. It was the weekend, after all, and that meant she'd be spending time with her mother exercising.