Status
Name: Nathan Orion
Moniker: N/A
Level: 10
Archetype: Blood Berserker
Class: Blood Pawn
Imprints: Balls of Steel, SkullCrusher, Demon Slayer
Strength: 15
Dexterity: 10
Vitality: 11
Constitution: 8
Perception: 7
Dao: N/A
Faction: N/A
Ra'hal coins: 16,400
Free points: 3
Nathan let out a sigh of relief after confirming that his coins were still intact. He still had no idea how to spend them or where he was supposed to, but it would hurt to have all those coins drop to zero considering all the grinding he'd been doing.
The question of what to do with the coins brought up an important message the system had given him earlier, but he was too distracted to analyze it. When he'd gotten his first skills—Blood-Rebellion (I) and Life-Steal (I)—it had said that he'd be able to purchase skills and skill upgrades from merchants, but Nathan didn't think he'd seen a single merchant in this... place. Heck, he'd barely seen anything that didn't want to kill him on sight. He might attribute that to the fact that the system was still populating the world.
Of course, he still hadn't explored the place he was at right now. Maybe there might be a merchant and even a civilization further in the forest. He'd have to explore today; a stronghold would have to wait for the time being.
Nathan glanced at his stats. He seemed to be leaning heavily on his Strength stat, with Vitality the second in line. He could easily defend Strength by pointing out that he couldn't fight higher-level monsters without improving it.
The stat helped to level the playing field somewhat. After all, his Dexterity and Perception could only take him so far if he couldn't land successful hits on the monsters. Vitality was also straightforward—it increased his health pool, and what that did in turn was self-explanatory.
What was really bugging Nathan was the fact that he knew he couldn't keep tossing free points into Strength over and over again. With everything he'd learned from the system, it surely couldn't be that simple. He'd eventually have to share the points around—maybe not equally, but still, it couldn't just be Strength.
The only stat other than Strength and Vitality that Nathan thought would be really helpful in a fight was Constitution. Not Perception to enhance his vision or Dexterity to improve his agility. Nope, he needed plain old Constitution; he needed better defense.
His defense was currently lacking by far. Just because he could take the cuts didn't mean that he should. The smart thing for him to do was to make his body tougher and harder to pierce or breakthrough. Imagine common level four and five imps still being able to rip through his skin at will. Not only was it bad for the optics at level ten, but it was also bad for him as those cuts hurt like crazy. With the decision made, Nathan simply had to move points to Constitution.
Two points to Constitution.
Name: Nathan Orion
Moniker: N/A
Level: 10
Archetype: Blood Berserker
Class: Blood Pawn
Imprints: Balls of Steel, SkullCrusher, Demon Slayer
Strength: 15
Dexterity: 10
Vitality: 11
Constitution: 10
Perception: 7
Dao: N/A
Faction: N/A
Ra'hal coins: 16,400
Free points: 1
Nathan both saw and felt the update, the system screen replacing the figure attached to his Constitution stat while his skin felt like it was... tightening, for lack of a better word. It did feel like it'd be harder to break through now, and the hope was that if something did manage to break through, it wouldn't do too much damage.
The memory of the imp almost ripping his guts out with its claws was still vivid in his mind. It was so close that Nathan was sure he would've died if it had managed to do that. The only reason it'd even been able to do that was because of the 20% debuff he'd been suffering from at that time, which was quite the bummer because that debuff alone had knocked him down at least two to three levels.
So powerful.
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Nathan wondered what the actual fuck the master imp had been calling on for help. Whatever it was, Nathan had zero interest in going head-to-head with it—improved Constitution or no improved Constitution.
The yellow light that had spilled forth from the amulet felt more like an eye that was watching him. Then the debuff was cast on him, and the rest was history.
He had a feeling that it wasn't going to be history though; things like these rarely ended up staying buried. Nathan just had to be ready if and when something popped up coming for him.
With a start, Nathan realized he'd just been standing still doing nothing all day when he was supposed to be out exploring wherever this place was. He glanced around the stronghold; the ash-covered ground was definitely going to take a while for Nathan to clean up, and he certainly wasn't going to take all day doing that, which meant that he'd probably have to let that task sit until he was ready for it.
No biggie.
After all, it wasn't as if the stronghold would disappear and run away if he didn't clean up immediately. Nathan wondered how many other strongholds had been erected by now. If there were other survivors, he couldn't see why they wouldn't have advanced to the point of having their own strongholds.
Only one way to find out.
Time till the tutorial ends?
Planet Grade: F
Populating World... Time till completion - 5 [7:23:29]
Spawning Dungeons and Monsters... Time till completion - 5 [7:23:29]
Tutorial Ongoing... Time till completion - 5 [7:23:29]
Strongholds: 4
Four. There were four new strongholds—well, three if you excluded Blood Rock. The fact that there were three other strongholds apart from his confirmed that there were at least three other humans who'd survived skipping the tutorial.
While it didn't make for a good statistic, as they'd numbered closer to three million who'd skipped the tutorial at the beginning, that was a whole lot of people who had gone MIA.
Nathan pinched the bridge of his nose. He couldn't be dumb right now and do stupid shit. The system wasn't here to play and hand out cool weapons and skills for fun; it was here to evolve mankind into something else. If building, upgrading, and maintaining the new world were all the things that Nathan had to do to have a chance in the new world, then he'd do it.
Just as soon as he finished exploring his surroundings—he needed to know what he should protect himself from. Closing the stat screen with a thought, Nathan took one last look at the stronghold, his stronghold.
Blood Rock.
He mulled over the name for a second, rolling it over in his mind before picking a random direction and walking. He had to find out what and where exactly this place was.
___________
The further he walked, the more Nathan confirmed his thoughts. The forest as he'd known it was certainly getting noisier, which meant that the system hadn't lied when it said it was populating it. He just needed to figure out what it was populating it with.
But he highly doubted that the noises he was hearing were all alien sounds; some of them reminded him of Earth animals, which begged the question: where had they been when he first appeared? Was the system taking animals for their own tutorial, or were the animals so scared that they ran and hid, staying silent for fear of losing their lives?
As crazy as it sounded, either of the two options could be quite right really. Nathan had no idea what was to be considered crazy and what wasn't. Luckily for him, none of what made those sounds had come out to attack him, so that was a plus. He'd happily avoid them if they looked like anything close to the panther that had visited the burning camp last night.
The more Nathan walked, the more he felt like it took more effort to keep walking, and it was getting harder to breathe—not harder as in he was struggling to fill his lungs with air, just harder the way it'd be when you were walking up a hill. The dirt under his bloodied sneakers had begun to change into rock; heck, the entire landscape was changing the further he walked, and he had the striking suspicion that he was walking upwards.
The trees surrounding the area seemed to get shorter and shorter with every step that Nathan took. If this kept up, he was pretty sure he'd see a climbable tree. The glow of the crimson sky poured through this part of the forest as the tall trees that were usually blocking the light were becoming fewer and fewer. Normal-height trees now replaced them, and even those were few and far between.
The more he walked, the sparser the trees became, and Nathan felt a little bothered by the sight in front of him. Nathan was now trudging upwards on rocky ground instead of the dirt he'd become so accustomed to. The trees soon gave way to the secret they'd been hiding: a bare peak. It looked like the summit of whatever this was—actually, if Nathan was being honest, it looked like the bald head of his geography teacher, uneven with bumps here and there. Nathan made his way until he was standing atop the summit, and then and only then did he accept the fact that it was a mountain.
Shit!
Nathan couldn't even enjoy the view because it confirmed one of his topmost fears, just below dying a virgin. The fucking system had tossed him into a freaking island. Turns out he might end up dying as a virgin because the freaking system had just screwed him over.
On the flip side, the view was pretty amazing, and the breeze felt good on his skin, his magic pants ruffling in the wind. The kind of scene he would've happily traded any of his working days for if not for the fact that he knew the reality of his situation. The water stretched out from across the island from all sides, and Nathan could barely make out the next land mass after the island from where he stood.
"I'll not make it there by swimming."
He highly doubted he'd be able to, even if he mustered all the courage and determination in the world. The distance meant he'd spend at least five to six days at full swim to get to the nearest land mass, and he honestly had no idea if that too was an island. The second issue was the fact that land animals were already being mutated, and even random monsters were popping up here and there.
Was he really going to swim in such a large body of water where God knows how many things had already been mutated and how many new monsters the system had seen fit to place in the water?
Hell no.
He'd take his chances with the land animals; at least he could fight on solid ground, which he was way more accustomed to than water. With his location cleared, Nathan scanned his current surroundings. No surprise—trees were what dominated his vision. Those weren't the only things though; he could see a couple of rock protrusions spread around the mountain. There were very few that he could see: four at his first glance and six on the second scan. Nathan wondered what they were.
Probably caves.
With his work done at the summit of the mountain, he had to determine his next course of action. He was torn between heading back to Blood Rock and beginning the cleanup he so needed to do, but the curiosity in him wanted to explore more.
"One cave and that's it."
He promised himself he'd only check out one cave and then he'd get to cleaning up his stronghold. He just needed to find out which one was the closest so he could get back as soon as possible. He glanced again; the closest one was somewhere to the east. With a direction in mind, Nathan started walking and was soon swallowed up by the trees, totally oblivious to the creature observing him.
The walk down was much easier than the walk up—probably gravity at work. After almost thirty minutes, he came to the spot he'd spied from the summit and, yep, it was a cave. Nathan couldn't be bothered to waste his time ogling the thing; he was on a time crunch. A quick look around should sate his curiosity and he'd be out. He took a step into the mouth of the cave and let out a sigh as a notification popped up in front of him.
Dungeon Discovered