Chapter 5

I’d actually been awake to wish Sara a good day when she’d left for work today. Less than 2 hours later I’d finally got that notification I’d been after as I struggled to do another pushup.

+200 Body XP (+100 XP from Rested XP Bonus)

I felt that same sudden surge of energy rushing through me, leaving me feeling like I could get up and run a mile. When I stood up and ran my hands over my body, I could definitely feel a significant amount of muscle on my frame now. I was still skinny as hell, but it was only level 1 after all. Not an ounce of body fat on me, just stringy muscle pulled tight over my bones. I found myself wishing I had a mirror to help me keep track of my physical changes. I paused for a moment and then slapped a hand to my face as I pulled up my inventory page. The avatar it showed had indeed filled out a little bit. I still looked like I was borderline starving, but it was a substantial improvement over the near cadaverous avatar I’d first seen when I pulled up my inventory right after waking up from my coma.

I walked back and forth through the living room. Finally my legs were steady underneath me. I doubted I could actually run a full mile if I tried, but at least I was finally mobile. Which means it’s time to make myself deadly enough to start scoring some XP via kills. That was one of only two ways to get Character XP to level up as far as I knew. The only other way was by completing gigs for a fixer. And, since I’d have to level up to get a fixer's attention first, that method was going to be secondary at best.

As much as I didn’t much care for the idea of going full on murderhobo…well if that’s what I have to do to level up and survive Noir City, so be it. Blame the system that encourages murderhobo behavior, not the murderhobo.

I turned the TV on and flicked it over to a news program. As fast as I could, I pulled my revolver out and aimed at the news anchor's head. Wow, this gun is heavier than I’d thought. Upon a second’s thought I carefully opened and unloaded the gun before trying again. Really didn’t want to fuck up the wall and find out we were getting charged for it when we moved out, or worse yet fuck up the TV. I doubted they’d notice any additional fucked up-ness of the apartment when we left, but better safe than sorry.

Having safely unloaded my weapon, I took up a classic gunslinger pose in front of the TV and repeatedly snatched the gun out of the holster, pointed it at someone on screen, and pulled the trigger with a loud click. Around the dozenth or so time I pulled my gun it happened.

Handgun Skill learned

+200 Handgun XP (+100 XP from Rested XP Bonus)

+200 Reflex XP (+100 XP from Rested XP Bonus)

I felt a grin bare my teeth. I can learn skills by just doing things. This is a total gamechanger. I’d thought I was going to have to wait to get skill points from leveling up to learn some skills. But if I could just pick up skills by doing random stuff…well that opened up a lot of potential avenues for self improvement. Could I just sneak around and pick up the stealth skill? Could I jump around and do cartwheels to pick up acrobatics? I knew from the vlogs that there was an absolute shit ton of available skills to choose from, but I have no clue if those are the only ones available now that I’m actually here. Can I pick up a skill just for underwater basket weaving? Can I teach myself to program or hack? What if I start tagging buildings with a spray can? Will I find that I’ve learned how to paint? Do it enough and suddenly I’m painting uber lifelike portraits? I just never seem to run out of questions as to how this all works. Fuck, I miss being able to just look up the answers on the internet.

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

I took a deep breath and steeled myself to ignore questions that I couldn’t answer or would simply be answered by experience over the coming days. I got back to drawing my pistol on the folks on TV. It took more than an hour before I got another notification.

+200 Handgun XP (+100 XP from Rested XP Bonus)

+200 Reflex XP (+100 XP from Rested XP Bonus)

Another 2 hrs and I finally got a third

+100 Handgun XP

+100 Reflex XP

Guess the rested bonus wore off, dang. I kept it up all day, slowly eking out more XP. Sheer boredom led me to doing more exercise, though I didn’t manage to score another XP notice. Just wasn’t working out hard enough for this level maybe. I’d have to go out and go for a run or something. I’d checked my Body XP and it was at 0/2000XP so it was going to be progressively harder and harder to level up without being able to put points into it from leveling up my Character. Hmm, if I’m getting Reflex XP from leveling up my handgun skill then I need a Body skill to level up too. I shrugged. If using a handgun got me that skill then if I want that acrobatics skill I need to try to do some acrobatics. I’d never done anything acrobatics related in my last life but…I did a somersault on the floor. Then I did another. Somersaulting from one end of the narrow living room to the other and then turning around and somersaulting back. It happened on my third pass.

Acrobatics Skill learned

+100 Acrobatics XP

+100 Body XP

YES! It worked! I spent the next 5 hours all but bouncing off the walls as I jumped, rolled, and cartwheeled around the apartment. I even got a bit cocky and tried to kick off the wall into a backflip…I’d landed painfully on my neck and shoulders and worried for a hot second that I’d just killed or crippled myself. I’d ultimately been fine, but my neck still hurt hours later so I was holding off on trying that one again until I’d leveled up acrobatics.

By the time Sara got home from work I had Acrobatics up to 500/1000XP. Body had started slowing its leveling and wasn’t giving me XP every time Acrobatics gave me XP so Body was only up to 300/2000XP. I had started pulling my gun and dry firing at the TV as I came out of a roll and had even gotten another Handgun XP notice which put me up to 600/1000XP.

Sara and I had eaten together, she got a discount on BurgerDepot food so that was once again my meal of the day. After asking about my workout regimen, since I was looking even better today than yesterday, I’d dived into a somersault and came out drawing my pistol and pulling the trigger with a click pointed at the TV. I explained how I’d got to the point I could walk fine now and was working on more physical activities. She’d laughed hysterically after watching me somersault from one end of the apartment to the other. I explained that it was helping to fine tune muscle groups I’d need in a fight, but I still felt my cheeks heating up at her continued laughter.

I made sure to ask her about the possibility of hitting a shooting range, since I wanted my handgun level to be at least at 1 before I went hunting for assholes. She’d given it some thought and decided that we were going to hit up a gun shop that had a shooting range next door to the BurgerDepot she worked at. She’d apparently met the owner and thought he might throw us a discount given how much he flirted with her when he came in for lunch every day.

Plans were made to head there before her shift tomorrow morning. I reloaded my gun with a smile as Sara started watching the next episode of Leather Skin. After watching for a bit I decided I didn’t particularly want to watch another contestant get skinned, so I took a shower before heading to bed. As I was entering my room Sara made sure I knew that she had once again called the winner correctly, a designer who had crafted an apparently very trendy leather thong. I just shuddered at the thought and flopped down onto my bed for the first time after dropping a box of stuff that belonged to me, that I hadn’t gone through yet, onto the floor. While I found how cheap life in Noir City was to be somewhat grotesque, I was absolutely going to take advantage of that fact tomorrow to murder some people. Should really try to get my head around that and grow some moral calluses.