Chapter 13_Chronicler’s Tale

New World Day 3

The sun hadn’t set yet by the time I made it back home relatively intact, but I didn’t intend to go back outside the rest of the day and maybe not even tomorrow depending on how well my ankle healed. Speaking of my ankle, I needed to take some steps to make sure that my injuries didn’t become infected. I left my weapons and backpack in the garage and dragged myself to the bathroom inside of the basement bedroom. It was pitch black outside of the garage since I no longer had electricity. I knew the way well enough that it wasn’t a problem to get to the bathroom, but I would need some light to work on my wounds. I felt around blindly in the area I knew the cabinet below the sink should be and yanked it open. My parents had kept some candles and matches underneath the sink in case the stink ever got too bad. A few broken matches later I had three candles burning brightly enough that I could finally see what I was doing. No longer fumbling around blindly, I pulled some disinfectant and gauze wrap out of the medicine cabinet and went to work on my wounds. Hissing in pain, I carefully applied the disinfectant to my ankle. In addition to the broken ankle, the edges of the crayfish’s claw had left some nasty puncture wounds in a ghastly ring around my ankle. The only good thing was that the bone had not punctured the skin, but even so the pain was tremendous.

Looking to distract myself as I carefully cleaned my wounds, I toyed with the idea of using my new title points to buy the fear and pain resistance skills, but I discarded that idea in the end. The skills would no doubt lessen my fear and pain, but gaining those skills would likely be a mistake in the long run. Fear was one way that your unconscious mind alerted you to danger and it could heighten your senses putting them into overdrive in order to find and survive the source of the fear. Pain let you know when something was terribly wrong with your body. If you couldn’t feel pain you wouldn’t be able to tell when your body was on the brink of collapse. You needed to be able to push yourself past your normal limits, but as absurd as it sounded, even limit breaking has its limits. What I needed wasn’t a resistance to fear and pain but rather a way to control them. If I could learn to control them I could harness their positive effects and warnings to better survive any dangerous situation I might encounter in the future.

Just because I wasn’t going to buy those two resistance skills didn’t mean I wasn’t going to buy any resistance skills. I mentally commanded the System, “Purchase Basic Disease Resistance (Passive) (B) * and Basic Parasite Resistance (Passive) (B) *. Open Status!” Before I could take a look at my Status, I felt an immense power press down upon me from all around me and then pour into my body. The power flooded into every crevice of my body and changed it at its very core. It wasn’t painful yet it felt extremely invasive. It was certainly not something that would be easy to get used to. I wondered what it would have felt like if I had been conscious for more than a few seconds after I bought the regen skill. I didn’t feel anything like that when I learnt skills on my own which had to mean that it was a side effect specific to the System. Something to ponder for the future, but for now, I needed to take a look at my Status.

Name: Jason Silver

Job Name: N/A

LVL: 3 2%

Job LVL: N/A 0%

Job Points:

N/A

Titles:

Survivor (B) LVL 3 66%

Fool (B) LVL 4 20%

Pack Killer (B) LVL 3 50%

Beast Killer (B) LVL 3 50%

Risk Taker (B) LVL 2 99%

Repeated Risk Taker ( C ) LVL 2 37%

Compassionate Fool ( C ) LVL 1 78%

Title Points:

Stats:

HP:

MP:

Mana Regen:

Endurance:

Strength:

Speed:

Bonus Points:

59/105

10/10

2 per min (-1.5)

Status Effects:

Regen, Disease Resist, Parasite Resist

Skills:

Basic Axe Mastery (B) LVL 4 17%

Basic Gun Mastery (B) LVL 4 51%

Basic Regen (Passive) (B) LVL 5 12%

Basic Disease Resist (Passive) (B) LVL 1 0%

Basic Parasite Resist (Passive) (B) LVL 1 0%

My core level had gone up twice after the series of fights, and I had gained a few titles and a lot of skill and title levels. I was happy to see my abilities increasing, but I was extremely surprised to see that my gun mastery hadn’t increased even further than it had. After all of the actual combat, I thought it would increase a few more ranks.The two resistance skills that I bought were skills I considered essential for survival, but I noticed that they did create an even greater drag on my mana regen. I wasn’t sure if that would cause me problems in the future, but for now it was fine since I didn’t have any active magic skills to use my mana on anyways.

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After I finished wrapping my ankle, I took the candles and limped into the workshop to grab some water and food. I had brought some with me on my excursion, but in the end I proved too busy and too depressed by the deaths of my neighbors to take a break and eat. It wasn’t anything fancy just a dinner of lunch meat, chips, and water. I ate more than I probably should considering that I should be rationing them, but I was hurt, starving and tired both physically and mentally. Patting my stomach and burping loudly, I thought about my next move. I decided that that first thing to do was to update my notebooks. I wanted to keep my notes about the System and the New World as current as possible. Juggling the candles along with the food and water, I hobbled into the bedroom, changed my clothes, and grabbed my notebooks before I laid down on the bed. I then told the System, “New Title and Skill Explanation!”

Risk Taker (B) * LVL 2 99% : This title is awarded to users who refuse to take the safe and easy path. The users are willing to take risks in order to reach their goals. Rarity is determined by the degree of risks that the user takes. The greater the risk the higher the rarity will become. The rank of the title will increase after every ten levels.

Repeated Risk Taker ( C ) * LVL 1 37% : This title is awarded users who take repeated risks in a short period of time. The title requires users to already have the Risk Taker title. Rarity is determined by the degree of repeated risks that the user takes. The greater the risk the higher the rarity will become. The rank of the title will increase after every ten levels.

Compassionate Fool ( C ) * LVL 1 78% : This title is awarded to users who manage to somehow be both a fool and compassionate at the same time. The title requires users to already have the Fool title. The rarity is determined by how compassionate and foolish the user can be at the same time. The rank of the title will increase after every ten levels.

Basic Disease Resist (Passive) (B) * LVL 1 0% : This skill grants users a basic resistance to all diseases. The resistance even applies to magical diseases. The rarity of the skill is determined by additional abilities that may be granted along with the initial resistance. For example, higher rarity versions may allow the user to eat the disease infecting them to become immune to it or transfer it to another person. The rank of the skill will increase after every ten levels. Currently, the skill automatically takes .25 mana per minute from the user in order to function. This deduction can not currently be controlled by the user.

Basic Parasite Resist (Passive) (B) * LVL 1 0% : This skill grants users a basic resistance to all parasites. The resistance even applies to magical parasites. The rarity of the skill is determined by additional abilities that may be granted along with the initial resistance. For example, higher rarity versions may allow the user to control the parasites infecting them and send them to infect others. The rank of the skill will increase after every ten levels. Currently, the skill automatically takes .25 mana per minute from the user in order to function. This deduction can not currently be controlled by the user.

It took me a couple of hours to get all of my experiences, titles, and skills written down in my notebook, but I got it done. I decided to name the new monsters I had encountered the geyser crayfish after the eruption of water that appears every time they launch themselves out of the water and the shadow demon tree for the creatures the trees sent out to attack me. Like the forest coyote, they were primarily descriptive names instead of fancy abstract names, but that was alright. It was full on night by the time I was finished, but despite my exhaustion I knew I had work to do before I could sleep. My ankle kept me from practicing with my axe, but I could work on my mana. I turned my vision inwards and resumed the exciting yet monotonous practice of forcing it to contract and expand. I wasn’t too sure how long I was able to continue the practice, but I could tell that it had to have been another couple of hours due to how low the candles had burned. I only stopped practicing when the usual splitting headache arrived. Unable to continue practicing my mana control but not yet ready to go to bed, I hobbled into the garage and grabbed my backpack and weapons. I spent a half hour cleaning and reloading the guns before placing them next to the door in the bedroom and then unloaded the ammo and water in the workshop.

Since I felt the need to keep busy, I proceeded to organize my little home. I cleaned out two of the sets of metal shelves in the workshop by transferring the contents, mainly metal and wood scraps, to the back corner of the garage. I piled the boxes almost to the ceiling before returning to the workshop. I put all of the food that didn’t need refrigeration, the cooking utensils, cups, plates, pots, and pans on one of the open sets of shelves. Then I transferred all of the clothes and blankets from the bedroom onto the other one. There wasn’t quite enough room to accommodate everything, but I put the extra food items on top of the washer and the extra clothes on the dryer. The left over items were primarily ammo and medicine. The medicine I took into the bathroom and crammed into the cabinet under the sink. The ammo got moved into the gun safe in the workshop. By the time I was finished, the candles were burning dangerously low and my headache had disappeared. I left the candles burning while I practiced my mana once again until the now disgustingly familiar headache returned. With that finished, I undressed and carefully laid down on my bed. I wasn’t happy with everything that I had seen today, but I was at least content with what I had accomplished. I finished gathering my supplies from the house, I knew what happened to my neighbors, I survived yet another series of fights, and I had organized my basement fortress. As I collapsed onto the bed and drifted off to sleep, I thought to myself, “Jason, you can’t control the world and you can’t save everyone, but you damn well did what you could. Take the good with the bad, stand strong, hold your head high, and move on!”