Waking to the sound of a chirping alarm instead of a pyrotechnics simulating (turned real) a combat-zone, Lance pulled the front curtain aside and could just see the sun creeping over the tops of the trees. There was a surprising amount of illumination put off by this world’s blue sun. Which reminded him that he needed to check the charge controller on the solar system on the next skill check in 3 hours. Last time had been an additional 100 rounds for the .450. He wasn’t hurting for foodstuffs just yet, so he concluded that he needed to see about copying some of his pyro. He reckoned a crate of the screamers or bangers should fall underneath the 8 lb limit on his skill. The cases of artillery simulators and aerial flares were too much, and he would eventually have to duplicate those one at a time if he wanted to keep a stockpile. Not having any gods to thank, he thanked the system that the chain of events led to him having all of his military gear, his camping,fishing, and hunting gear, as well as a back seat packed with training ordinance. While not specifically lethal, some of that pyro could cause concussions and burns and in remote cases even a head injury that led to death. “DING”
Alignment assigned. Faith: Systema
Attunement attribute set to 9.
While not as specifically powerful as one of the many deities throughout the cosmos, Systema is a broad ranging, generalist alignment, granting moderate power and boons.
50 Energy acquired.
Systema Boon attunement level 5 awarded: HUD – only awarded to adherents of the system, the Heads Up Display allows the user to assign translucent peripheral indicators of the users Health points (HP in red), Stamina points (SP in green), and Magic points (MP in blue).
Increase your Attunement to gain additional boons.
“Well, that was unexpected”, he thought, “but winner, winner, chicken dinner!!” He could only hope that any additional boons he got were just as impactful.
Lance utilized the facilities, shaved, and got dressed in a clean uniform. He figured he might as well make use of the utilitarian clothes he had with him. Then he headed out of the camper to the cab of his pickup to do some more duplication. Reaching in the back seat, he laid his hand on a box of tripwire whistlers and activated his skill. One new box later, and it was time for him to head inside and fix some breakfast. After a quick cup of coffee and a fried egg with toast, he grabbed his list of tasks to give himself a fresh reminder and decide if he needed to add anything, or rewrite the entire list. Reading over the list, he decided today would be the day for recon. First he was going to move his truck. He decided he would park it alongside the northern tree line. That would give him the maximum possible standoff distance to the trail coming in from the south, without boxing himself in and being able to make a quick drive toward the trail without having to make any hops over the ring of stone that he had found.
Putting on his drop-leg holster and securing his 9mm pistol. He hopped out of the camper and relocated the pickup. Grabbing his compass out of the console, he decided to check if this world even had a magnetic field, and if so, if it matched his choice of cardinal directions. Moving out about 20 meters from the truck and camper, he held the compass out steady and verified that indeed the direction he had been calling north, based on the traversal of the sun, was indeed attracting the north magnetized end of the compass. Turning and walking due east, almost to the treeline, he verified that the needle quickly returned to pointing north and continued to do so as he walked. Pocketing the compass, he returned to the camper to grab his trusty rifle/shotgun combo, and throw the recharged headlamp into a cargo pocket. Re-circling the clearing, he ensured that no other beasties had made an appearance into the area and all of his early warning system was still intact. Once that was done, he headed back over to the narrow trail. It was time to see what lay outside this little clearing that he decided to make his temporary home.
Lance started moving up the trail while working to maintain the military idiom of head on a swivel. He was constantly changing his point of view from looking at the trail in front of him for tracks, to scanning left to right, taking a turn over his shoulder to make sure nothing was coming up behind him, and the one that most people forget and that had gotten him in his first tussle in this world, looking up. He had been slowly making his way up the trail for about 10 minutes now and was about 500 meters out. So far he had seen tracks that reminded him of a possum, a squirrel, and most likely one of those cat/coyote hybrids he had his run-in with. He had also come across some bird tracks. One set reminded him of a turkey, and the other was larger, more reminiscent of an ostrich or the like. He had also seen some furtive movement in the branches of the trees. Whatever it was, it wasn’t actively aggressive at this point, and he was keeping an eye out. As he moved ahead, about 30 meters up the trail, a disfigured humanoid stepped out from the trees. It looked like it had digitigrade lower legs, transitioning into humanoid posture with feathered arms. The human resemblance stopped at the neck however, and the head mostly resembled a cassowary. He was focusing on the creature trying to utilize his Analyze skill, when its posture suddenly became more aggressive and it lowered its head and charged. Hoping to end the confrontation without a direct conflict, Lance sidestepped behind a tree and the creature rushed past. However, it was quite agile and was able to stop and turn very quickly. Lance noticed that the crest on top of its head was shining, and he determined that it was actually a sharpened blade. One of the claws on its feet also appeared to be about six inches long and glittered like it was made of metal. It raised its feathered arms out to the side and let out a sound like a combination of a rumbling didgeridoo and a 60 year old man’s smoking cough. Then it once again lowered its head and began its charge. This time Lance was sure there was not going to be a peaceful conclusion to the encounter, and he stepped aside once more while leveling his rifle and firing one round center mass. The birdlike creature flailed up on the very tips of its toes and crashed inelegantly on its face right beside him. As he was about to wind down from this engagement, he caught just a shadow of movement across his face and threw himself to the side as a basketball sized spider dropped to the ground right where he had been standing. Rolling to his feet, he squared off with his new assailant as it reared its head up and appeared ready to charge. Not a fan of spiders due to a brown recluse bite and the subsequent rotting lesion it produced that wound up requiring painful debridement sessions, and with no readily available flamethrower, he stepped forward quickly and did his best field goal kicker imitation and punted it straight into a tree. It impacted with a resounding ‘THWACK’ and crumpled to the ground with its legs curled up into its thorax. “DING”
Enemies slain x 2. Energy gained 50.
Level increased by 1. 3 Free Attribute Points Gained.
New Profession Skill Gained – ‘Danger Sense’.
Quickly scanning his surroundings, and devoting some extra attention on the canopy above him, Lance determined that he was all clear for the time being. Sitting down with his back against a tree, he wiped the sweat from his forehead noticing that his red bar and blue bar were completely full, and the green bar relating to his stamina was depleted by about a quarter, and conducted a little internal after-action review. He knew he had let himself get a little tunnel-visioned during the first fight, and knew that you never let your guard down, but he almost had, and if the sun hadn’t been where it was in the sky, he would have missed the shadow indicating the spider’s attack. He decided that his new passive skill, “Steady Under Pressure”, worked soundly during both engagements, but was actually a contributor to his lowered vigilance due to the control of adrenaline and the fight or flight instinct. He would have to purposefully increase his awareness until that hypervigilance became second nature. Taking a water bottle out of his assault pack, he took a big drink, and considered the creatures before him. His failure to get an ‘Analyze’ on the first creature before it attacked had him deciding to work on that to increase its speed. Moving over to the bird-like humanoid first, he focused on it and activated ‘Analyze’.
Corpse; Grounded Harpy; A flightless variant, its mostly docile
nature means this monster is often underestimated, especially
during breeding or brooding seasons when it becomes very
territorial and/or protective. Its greatest threat lies in its
extraordinarily sharp bladed crest combined with its speed
and maneuverability and its spear like middle toe in conjunction
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
with its impressive kicking strength.
Placing his hand on the body, he activated his ‘Loot’ ability. After the light display and dissipation of energy, Lance was left with two items laying on the ground. Wanting to know what the system called his loot, he attempted to hurriedly activate his ‘Analyze’ skill. When it didn’t work, he forced more mental intent into knowing what he was looking at without spending more focus on the item. The pressure in his head built until at last “DING”
Skill “IDENTIFY” has been gained at level 1.
Willpower attribute has increased by 1.
Enchanted Axehead
Subsequently activating ‘Analyze’ on it, he got more in depth information
Axehead; Metal; Titanium/Calcium Alloy (High Strength
Corrosion resistant, conducive to enchantments)
Enchanted with ‘SHARPNESS’
Placing the axehead in his pack, Lance picked up the other item and activated his new ‘Identify’ skill.
Enchanted Spearhead
Again, activating ‘Analyze’ he received a deeper description of the item.
Spearhead; Metal; Titanium/Calcium Alloy (highly compatible
with bone)
Enchanted with ‘PIERCING’
He placed the spearhead in the pack with the axehead, and walked over to the spider. Tagging it with an ‘Identify’, it returned:
Drop Spider HP-0 Disposition –
While hitting it with ‘Analyze’, came back with:
Corpse; Drop Spider; A venomous spider with a paralyzing
Neurotoxin, that allows the rapid immobilization of prey that it then cocoons and buries to consume later.
Looting the spider provided Lance with a vial, similar to a test tube, of clear liquid, and a spool of what looked like parachute cord.
Identifying the items, Lance saw:
Anesthetic & Spidersilk
‘Analyze’ returned:
Container; Glass; Durable
Liquid; Alchemical; Anesthetic (dilution from the venom of a
mature drop spider)
Cordage; Spidersilk (drop spider); High Tensile; 50m
Lance was thrilled with the loot drops from both the harpy and the spider, and ecstatic about the development of another skill. One that appeared would give him a quick I.D. of items and creatures, their health pool, and their disposition. He’d just have to see if it worked on people, and if the disposition was toward him or just in general.
Finished with his looting, Lance realized he still had to address his new attribute points and his new skill. Focusing on his attribute points, he tried to assign one to Attunement. No matter how hard he focused, it wouldn’t take. He guessed that one was going to have to develop naturally. It would have been nice to bump it to 10 and see if he got anything new from the system. Taking a gander at the rest of his attributes, he made the decision that he would not be a min-maxer (the gaming strategy of focusing almost exclusively on 2 or 3 attributes). There was no such thing as a dump stat in real life, and this was his real life. He could occasionally bump a stat above the rest for some increase, but in the end a well rounded generalist translated well to his life goal. So, to that end, he assigned one point each to Wisdom, Charisma, and Empathy bringing those all one point above his supposed baseline to eleven. Focusing in on his new skill “Danger Sense”, he ‘Analyzed’ it.
Profession Skill: Danger Sense - You know that gut feeling, that
ethereal mental tug that something is watching you? This
passive skill makes that more tangible, giving you warning or
insight into hazards, dangers, and killing intent. Higher levels
increases range and/or lead time of skill.
Once more, he had hit the skill lottery jackpot. As far as he was concerned he was quickly developing in this new world. However, he didn’t know how he stacked up against whatever sapient creatures, monsters, and beasts across the land. Once again he whispered a simple prayer of thanks to the system that he came to rest where he did. “DING”
Attunement Attribute has increased by 1. You’re welcome ;)
Systema Boon attunement level 10 awarded: MAP - Allows the automatic population of a mindspace map of any areas you have seen or traversed. Routes and waypoints may be stored, physical maps that have been studied may be added.
Focusing his intent on ‘MAP’, Lance saw a depiction of a band of trees around a clearing along with a dashed trail/road indicator running to the south. Looking at the right side of the clearing, he saw a blue circle with a misshapen rectangle inside it with small circles below it. He recognized it as the military order of battle symbol for a highly mobile truck, in this case, his truck. Thinking about zooming in, he could start to see individual trees starting to stand out, and then a faint depiction of the ring of stone that he had apparently teleported into the middle of, and then a fair top down representation of his truck. Zooming back out, he could see a green triangle representing himself and at his thought, the map recentered around him zooming to the extents of what he could physically see. He had no complaints about this boon, and the only additional option he could wish for it to have would be a minimap with IFF (identify-friendly-or-foe) capabilities kind of like air traffic control and their radar and transponder data.
Finished with all his mucking about with the system, he decided he was going to have to buckle down and start covering some ground if he was going to get any viable recon done. To this point he’d only covered half a click (slang for kilometer) of ground. On high alert, he started up the trail once again. Soon his skill would be off cool-down and he was hoping to make some significant progress before taking a short break to do some more “Duplicate’ testing. Over the next 30 minutes, he covered another click-and-a-half without running into any confrontation. He’d still seen the occasional animal track crossing the trail, and had caught a few glimpses of small creatures scurrying away at his approach. Just ahead, only about 25 or 30 meters, there was a distinct thinning of the trees. He slowed down, utilizing the trees and bushes to mask his approach. As he got nearer, he could see that he had happened upon a roadway. Looking left and right along the road, he couldn’t see any other signs of civilization in sight. He could tell, from where he was standing, that the trail he had followed here was not apparent from the roadway and hadn’t been accessed in quite a while. He couldn’t explain how it had remained clear for 2 kilometers or so through the forest with no signs of use. Settling in to watch and wait for a while (one of the first skills he had learned from the Army, even though it wasn’t part of the written curriculum), he got as comfortable as he could and started debating on how he could further test his duplicate skill that was very soon to be off its cooldown. He didn’t need another bottle of water right now, and he could duplicate one of his loaded magazines for his rifle, but he decided some broader experimentation was in order. He knew the skill said non-magical object, so he decided he would start with the spearhead to see if enchanted fell under the magical label. He was fairly confident that it did, but testing and observations were the basis of determining equipment and skill reliability. Removing his loot items from his assault pack, he held the spearhead in his hand and focused on it while attempting to activate his ‘Duplicate’ skill. Nothing happened except an odd pressure right between his eyebrows. Trying one more time with the same results, he replaced the spearhead and axehead in the assault pack and tried the same thing with the vial of anesthetic, with the same result. Looking at his resource bars in his HUD he could see that his slightly depleted stamina bar, from his hike, appeared to be creeping up, while his other two resource bars were completely full. He determined from that, that failed attempts weren’t using up any of his magic. Replacing the vial, he held the spider silk cord and tried using his skill on it. Almost immediately, he was in possession of two spools of the cord. “DING”
Class Skill ‘DUPLICATE’ has increased by 1 Level
Lance quickly focused on analyzing his skill. Hoping the level increase had shortened the cool-down, he was mildly disappointed to see that he could now duplicate an object that weighs up to 15 pounds. Drawn from his thoughts by noise coming from down the road, he focused off to the east where a team of mule-like animals were pulling a wagon around the bend. Behind them came another, and then another. He stealthily layed down on his stomach to watch from the bushes and saw 15 wagons from Gypsy style caravans to covered wagons to a couple of open air wagons stacked high with crates. Lance was fairly certain as the wagons passed by that he was watching a merchant caravan. The somewhat sweaty and tired disposition of the animals led him to believe that they had been traveling for a while, and that civilization was probably more quickly found if he headed in the same direction the caravan was heading. Not ready to come face to face with an alien population (although, he was technically the alien), he stayed hidden watching the various people. He saw people he was fairly certain were human, along with some with pointed ears that he would equate to elves from his games, along with some stocky short people he suspected might be dwarfs. In the trail wagon, filled with what appeared to be bags of grain, barrels of water, and assorted pieces of tack for the wagon teams, he saw a diminutive man with a beard almost as long as he was tall wearing short pants and a tunic in red, along with a floppy red conical hat. He thought to himself that this one had to be a gnome. As that final wagon passed by, Lance felt a slight chill run up his spine as that small man looked right at him and gave him a very sincere appearing smile and nod of the head.
The caravan had been gone for about 10 minutes, and Lance had settled his discomfort from the little old man, so he was getting ready to withdraw from his observation post, when he heard and odd humming noise coming from the direction the caravan had headed. Concerned that the gnome-like person had really seen him and they had sent someone back to deal with him thinking he was some kind of bandit or such, he prepared himself for a running/fighting retreat. Suddenly from the distance, a squat metallic looking “wagon”, most closely resembling that new electric pickup came zipping up the road. Lance held still waiting to see if they were coming after him, when they zipped right on by and out of sight, probably traveling 45 or 50 miles per hour. With what he could only classify as an automobile out of sight and hearing range, he slowly stood up, turned and headed back down the trail toward his clearing. He had located civilization, scouted out his route, and collected more intel and trinkets. It was time to return home before he found himself traveling in the dark.