My memories of what happened after that were vague. I remember the pain. The slick feeling of fluids and goo against my hyper sensitive skin. I remember waking a few times, only to throw up all over myself before blacking out again. I remember the scorching heat burning away at my arms and legs and how that heat had seeped up to my head. I can recall the shadows reaching out to me, intent on devouring me, only to disappear right before they touched me. I dreamed of things. Playing with friends as a kid. My parent giving me my first console on Christmas. I dreamt of video games, colored in blue.
And then I sat up, gasping for breath and heart pounding in my chest. Bewildered, I thought for a short moment that everything had been a dream. But the stench of decay, the sour smell of old vomit and the coppery smell of blood, the gritty and rough ground along with a disgusting feeling of stickiness covering me from head to toe, quickly destroyed that small surge of hope. Peering ahead, I see two shadowy lumps at my feet, the fuzzy bodies slightly illuminated by a soft blue glow emanating from behind me.
Suddenly the memories of what happened after the spider attack rushed into my mind, leaving me desperately but gingerly feeling around my body. But I didn’t find anything. Nothing. But I knew I had been bitten. I remember the pain. But there was nothing. Nothing except thumb sized holes in my clothes. For a moment, I sit there absentmindedly fingering the holes in my pant leg before I do what I always do when I can’t figure something out. I move on to the next thing.
Or in this case, the next question. I shuffle around without getting up to inspect the formerly purple crystals. For whatever reason, the crystals were glowing blue. And much brighter than before too. Not to mention that they didn’t seem to have that hypnotizing effect anymore either.
On the other hand (literally), the chunk of crystal that I had ripped out for self defense purposes earlier had turned black. Well as far as I could tell in this still mostly dark cave, it was black. And oddly enough it was still glowing.
Kinda.
It was really weird, and ‘glowing’ might be the wrong word. When I put the crystal in my shadow cast from the soft glow of the other crystals, it stood out. The darkness from the my crystal seemed to be different from the normal darkness of the cave. Instead of a lack of light that is normal shadows, the crystal’s darkness seemed to have substance and stood out even when placed somewhere without light shining on it.
Of course at this point, I just took it as par for the course. I did bang the crystal on the ground to test its durability. And yes, for a moment I did feel like a caveman, but after using it to fend off the eight legged terrors from earlier, I was hoping to continue to use it as a weapon. To my delight, it was very sturdy. And surprisingly light for a three foot long piece of rock.
Now that I’ve gone through most of the questions, even though they remain unanswered, I lean against the wall next to the crystals and think back to when I started hallucinating right after the ‘Attack of the Giant Spiders’ episode.
And just as I think of the notification, and it was certainly a game notification, it pops right back into existence. Followed be a whole row of notification.
Level Up!
%ERROR% Unregestired Entity
%SCANNING%
%COMPILING INFORMATION%
%LOADING DATA%
Welcome to
Body and Soul Core Alteration System Interface
Defeated Immature Stalker Spiders x2
Core Points gained!
+12 CP
Level Up!
Minor Venom Immunity Gained!
Status Name Damian Dawn Age 26 Level 1 Strength 8 Soul 1 Control 4 Spirit 1 Constitution 3 Vitality 2 Intelligence 4 Empathy 1 Memory 5 Willpower 2 Perception 3 Luck 6 Free Attribute Points 5 Locked Titles None Skills None Abilities Foreign Entity Lv. X Minor Venom Immunity Lv. 1
Maybe it wasn’t a hallucination? I stare at the screens, trying to glean as much information from them as I could. I might be slow on the uptake, but I wasn’t stupid, and I knew that I wasn’t in the same realty anymore. So any piece of info could be vital for my survival. For example, those bastards I had killed earlier, were immature. As in young. I was nearly killed by fucking Baby spiders. The thought that there were large versions of those things did more than just gave me the chills. I was absolutely horrified at this tidbit of information. On the bright side, at least I don’t need to worry about their fucking Poison!! Not like they even really need it to finish me off.
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
I take a deep breath to calm myself down, before looking over the rest of my status. From what I can see, it seems to be a unique mix of video game elements and some dungeon and dragons stuff. I never really got into those kinds of table top games, but there was a short period of my life when I looked into it a bit. As I recall, they were know to have all kinds of attributes, much more than any video game would normally have.
The Physical stats seem to be fairly obvious at first glance, but I’m not entirely sure what ‘constitution’ would mean. The other column however, gives me pause. Metaphysical? Looking at the attributes under it, I assume that means that there might be stuff like magic here. If glowing rocks and giant spiders weren’t obvious signs enough. But figuring out what the stats would do is much harder than in the physical column. Whats the difference between soul and spirit? Why is Empathy a stat and why is Vitality in the metaphysical section? Doesn’t Vitality effect Health? Does that mean that life force is something different than your physical condition? That would help explain constitution a bit, and that also means that Vitality is something else here that might not effect your health. At least not directly.
Most of my status screen was self explanatory, but in a way that left me asking how it could effect me in reality. I understood the word like ‘skill’ or ‘ability’, but that didn’t explain what they did in context with this world. How would ‘Titles’ be relevant in real life? I know what all these things would do in video games, but I can’t wrap my head around how that would translate in this new reality.
With a sigh, I once again accept that there’s one more thing that I couldn’t find answers for. But one thing that really caught my interest, was the free attribute points. I was making an assumption that by adding those point in strength for example, I would get stronger. With my current situation, being able to quickly get stronger was a godsend. But thinking back on how I ‘fought’ those spiders, I honestly didn’t think that me being stronger would really make a difference if all I did was freak out every time I encountered something dangerous.
That said, I didn’t really understand how much a point was ‘worth’. What was a lot and what wasn’t. I seemed to have a decent amount of strength, but if I compared myself to others, I wasn’t really that strong. I mean, I was better than the average person, due to working in construction, but it wasn’t as if I worked out or anything. And my intelligence was only half my strength. Did that mean I was a muscle head without muscles? I was pretty sure I wasn’t an idiot though… So if a made the assumption that I wasn’t an idiot, then that would mean that a point in strength didn’t have the same value as a point in intelligence.
At the same time, that meant that the quantity of the attribute points in each attribute, had a different meaning in their respective attributes.
Now my head was spinning a little. Things got complicated real fast there, and at this point there was no way that I would be able to deduce the specifics of the attributes. Maybe I really was an idiot? I guess I had to give myself some slack, after all, I had no way to compare the attributes. How would a person measure how intelligent they are? Then compare it after spending a point in Intelligence. And then do the same with the rest of the attributes. After that, somehow assign a ‘worth’ to everything?
Putting that aside, of all the attributes, the ‘Metaphysical’ ones were the most interesting. What if I want gambling after increasing my luck? And what if one of the attributes let me use magic? I was oddly excited to figure it out. But what I had decided on, was investing at least a few points in ‘Willpower’. Hopefully that would let stay calmer in a situation like earlier.
That and the Physical attribute ‘Control’ were the two I was hoping would be most useful. If I consider the ‘context’ of ‘Control’ being in the physical column, then that should mean that Control should be similar to Dexterity. Since it wasn’t hard to do damage to the spiders, then hopefully having more control over my body and the ability to not panic as soon as I see them, I would be much better equipped to fight them.
So, now that I’ve decided which attributes I wanted to raise, I decided to spend four points, two on each and save one for if I realize that I’m lacking in some aspect in order to survive. But how do I assign the points?
As soon as I had decided to put those point in those attributes, another notification popped up.
+2 Control
+2 Willpower
Confirm
Yes/No
With that, I felt that to use the system, all I had to do was ‘Decide’. That feeling of making a decision seems to be what triggers the interaction with the status screen. To confirm that theory, I ‘decided’ on ‘Yes’. Instantly that screen went away and my status screen came back. And it seemed to have worked, my attributes had gone up. But then I got another notification.
Commencing Upgrade
I felt a weird tightening of my muscles and an odd tingling in throughout my body. At the same time, I felt an invisible ‘weight’ slowly start to lift off my heart. And I don’t mean my physical heart, but more the place in my chest that feels things. After a few moments, I wouldn’t say that the sensations disappeared, rather it was more like I just got used to it really fast, to the point that I almost didn’t notice it anymore unless I concentrated on the feeling.
In order to calm my racing heart, I concentrate on controlling my breathing. I wasn’t sure why this made me feel so excited, especially since it seems to have been a result of me almost dying, but a part of me wanted more. That said, that part of me was really small and I had no intention of risking my life for what could be summed up to a tingling sensation.
The only thing of any real importance left on my status, was the ability 'Foreign Entity'. Looking at that, i could only assume it was related to the error messages from earlier. I had no idea why me being from another world counted as an 'Ability' though. And concentrating on it didn't suddenly make the screen change to give me a convenient explanation either. So i decided to just leave that be too, and move on.
At this point, I’ve run out of reasons to delay myself. I wasn’t wounded and there wasn’t any more information I could glean just by sitting here. Not to mention that I was not only thirsty again, but also really hungry.
So summoning my courage, a stand up and make my way out of the cave and into the tunnels, black crystal in one hand, and a stone that had once been glowing in the other. Determined to make it out of here alive, I head back downwards, towards the starry lake.