Alice was taking a short walk to the old farmhouse. The abandoned wooden building hadn’t seen much use -even as a storage room -since trading with the town started, except by Alice who had been using it as a not-so-hidden hideout. Instead of doing something to pass the time, like she normally would, she was buzzing with excitement. She had recently awakened her system. Status, she thought whilst turning her thoughts inwards.

Level: 1

Race: Human(Age:10)

Titles:

Vitality: 2

Endurance: 1

Speed: 3

Strength: 2

Wisdom: 5

Passive skills:

Active Skills:[Basic Identification: Lvl 1]

Alice had felt different, as if she had woken up with a new limb. By deciding to inspect the strange new addition, she had unlocked the status sheet. It was as if a paper had been firmly stapled to the back of her mind, where it stayed, entirely unmoving until she willed it to. As she inspected the metaphysical page, the text seemed to wriggle to life, the letters reordering into a notification.

Congratulations! You have leveled up!

At first she was curious about the possibilities she had unlocked but the paper remained completely dead after the first notification, she also tried inspecting the words on her stat sheet to the same result: absolutely nothing. She quickly grew bored of it and went back to playing, and even though there were still some unanswered questions, she could always just ask her parents when they came back from work if she needed to. As she started to run out of things to do, her mind drifted to her parents. She hoped they would be back soon, she was starting to miss them.

"Alice!", a childish shout cutting through her daydreams, "Alice, come play."

Probably Josh, she thought before answering the call, "Coming!"

Great timing! I was just starting to get bored of playing alone. she thought as she popped out of the farmhouse excitedly. When the slightly chubby boy two years her junior entered view she waved and sped up a bit, before realizing that there was a wriggling feeling at the back of her mind. It felt like something was being hastily scribbled inside her head. Once she had recognized the odd feeling, new information was projected into her mind.

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Name: Joshua

Race: Human(Age:8)

Was this that Identification thing? If this was it, while interesting, it was incredibly useless.

"Let's play! Uncle said I should stop 'harassing' him and come play with you."

Alice looked at the clearly bored and over energetic child as he begged to play, "Okay what do you want to play first?”

"Hide and seek!” he pleaded.

“Hmm, no. Hide and seek is too boring with only two people, let’s play something else.”

“We can play tag.” Josh suggested again before giving it a bit more thought, “Actually, never mind. You’re faster so you’ll always win. Why don’t you decide what to play?”

After a few minutes had gone by, neither of them could think of a game they both wanted to play so instead, they simply wandered around while looking for something interesting. After seeing a few weirdly shaped rocks and curious looking bugs they had a competition to see who could build the best looking house out of things they found lying around outside. Alice tried her best, but her loose pile of sticks and dirt couldn’t beat Josh’s impressive tower made of stones stacked into a hollow cylinder, all topped with a golden grass roof. Since she could never be as good as him at using her hands, Alice vowed to find something she could beat him at by end of week.

Eventually the sun set and Alice’s mother came back from the nearby town north of the village, and her father from the forest in the west with a carriage half-full of the pelts and meat of animals from the forest surrounding the village. As they were eating dinner in their house, Adam, Alice's father broke the silence.

"I think I went a bit overboard with today, maybe you could sell some of the pelts during your next visit to town honey?” He said with a toothy grin.

"A bit? I'd say there’s about half the forest in that cart.” she joked while letting out a soft laugh. "I could take some of it with me, but we should save some of it for winter, you can never be too prepared.” Dropping her tone Alyssa continued,” On the topic of preparation, I came across some unnerving rumors going around that The Blood Reapers are becoming more active in the area."

"That damn cult full of psychos? The last thing anyone needs here is more of them. Here we are just trying to live our lives and they just have to sacrifice entire cities just to make some numbers go up." he said with a scowl printed on his face, his hatred of them clearer than day.

“Calm down Adam, they’re only rumors. “ Alyssa said in her calm, soothing voice.

"Numbers? Are they the same ones in that paper thing?", Alice asked while stepping into the conversation.

"Oh, you can now see your status? Maybe our games of tag won't be so short now." Alice’s mother said in an upbeat voice.

"They're short because you're a grown up!" she pouted playfully. "How can you even be so fast when you say you’re injured."

"I'm quick but not much else. For me to fight strong monsters I need to be able to use magic, which I can't use anymore."

"It's still unfair!"

"Either way, congratulations on your first level! It means you're growing." The hunter exclaimed, "Maybe your old man can start training you to be a hunter one of these days.

"But before you get too exited just remember, there’s more to your strength than your status, and more to life than your strength. The system only shows your abilities, it does nothing to change them. People getting too caried away with their level is how The Reapers happened. Just something for you to keep in mind.", her father quickly cautioned her before she was sent to bed, ending her day.