Lance once again found himself waking to unfamiliar circumstances. This time it was as he was staring up into a slightly purple tinted sky with a cobalt blue sun peeking through the canopy. As the circumstances of his situation came back to him, he froze. He had been unconscious for a while, and there had been a fair share of blood before he blacked out. Regulating his breathing, he listened closely for any signs of nearby threats. Not hearing anything more than the buzzing and associated noises of insects, he slowly turned his head from side to side looking for anything out of place. There just a short distance to his side lay the corpse of the creature that had jumped him. Seeing no other threats in view, he raised himself into a seated position and located his pistol laying near his feet. Reaching down and securing the 9mm, and verifying it was in good shape, Lance relaxed a bit more.
Standing up and approaching the corpse, he intended to inspect it a bit closer in the light of day. It definitely wasn’t any animal he’d ever seen, and Lance was an avid outdoorsman and hunter. Whispering to himself, “we’re not in Kansas anymore, or anywhere else we know”, he noticed the retracted claws on the critter before him and realized he needed to check his shoulder where the beast had attacked him. Removing his holster and uniform top, he determined that the animal hadn’t torn through his clothes and he was most likely just an impediment to the chase until their collision. He knew that he had been injured, but he could find no evidence of lacerated, punctured, or torn skin. Deciding that currently there was no more use looking for the highway, and that he didn’t need to worry about what the 1SG was going to think or do, Lance turned and headed back toward his truck where he could do a proper inspection of his shoulder, grab some chow, and rearm with some heavier firepower.
Arriving back at the small clearing, and almost positive that he had been transported to another world, universe, reality, or whatever, Lance decided it would be prudent to make a circuit of the clearing to gather intel and get his bearings. No other trails or paths appeared as he made his circle, so he proceeded towards his truck. About 10 meters out from his truck, he stumbled over something in the knee high grass and wrenched his knee. Glaring down, he saw what appeared to be part of a ring of stone about eight inches above the ground. The stone looked to be engraved with some kind of runic figures. Figuring he could add this mystery to the list, and wondering how he hadn’t tripped over it in the predawn darkness, he limped his way to the door at the back of his camper. Dragging his tired and sore butt up into the camper, he secured the door, grabbed a bottle of water and a package of jerky from one of the cabinets and sat down at the small dinette table. Quickly polishing off his impromptu meal, Lance then stood up and removed his shoulder holster, uniform top, and t-shirt. Taking the few steps over to the bathroom door, where he had a full length mirror, he noticed that his knee was like he hadn’t even twisted it. Turning his back to the mirror and looking over his shoulder, he examined his left shoulder looking for any traces of the injury he felt in the early morning altercation. There was no visible evidence at all. After waking up in the middle of the trail, Lance had noticed a flickering bit of light in the periphery of his vision, and had endured it through the hike back to the truck suspecting that it was a headache trying to take hold from all the stress and physical trauma. Grabbing a couple of aspirin from the medicine cabinet he sat back down at the dinette, swallowed the aspirin with a sip of water, and laid his forehead down against the tabletop. Closing his eyes to grab a moment of rest and consider all the things that had happened and were happening, the flicker of light he had been noticing resolved itself into an actual blinking blue dot.
Jerking upright, heart racing, he shout-whispered “NO WAY!!” I get a frickin system!” Having read his fair share of sci-fi, fantasy, Xianxia, and the like, Lance was quite familiar with the concept of acquiring a system. As he focused intently on the flashing blue dot, he could see, surprisingly without impairing his vision, a screen of messages:
ENERGY THRESHOLD REACHED, BEGINNING ACTIVATION ………………………………………………
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BEGINNING CORE CREATION
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ANALYZING ATTRIBUTE THRESHOLDS
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SETTING ATTRIBUTES
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ANALYZING LIFE EXPERIENCE FOR SKILL THRESHOLDS
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PLEASE SELECT YOUR STARTING CLASS
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PLEASE SELECT YOUR STARTING CLASS
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PLEASE SELECT YOUR STARTING CLASS
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NO CLASS SELECTED, RANDOM CLASS ASSIGNED
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WELCOME TO SYSTEMA
LIVE, LAUGH, LOVE……jk 😆
LIVE, STRIVE, GROW
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p.s. THINK STATUS WITH INTENT TO OPEN YOUR PROFILE
Taking a deep breath, Lance tried to calm down and slow his racing heart a bit. After 20 years in the United States Army, and nearly 8 more in the Army National Guard, he had experienced his share of stress, harrowing moments, and elation. Right now, he was more excited and at the same time more frightened than he had ever been in his life. He was facing the unknown. Cutoff and alone, reliant on only his own wits, skills, and drive, Lance had to explore this new land and this system, and see if he could find a way home or create a new life and home in this strange unfamiliar place.
Focusing intently on seeing his profile page, Lance thought STATUS. Almost immediately his mind was filled with an image of a page similar to a role-playing game character sheet:
LANCE RAVEN
Nickname: Rav Species: Human Faith: - -
Level: 0 Energy to next level: 0/100
Class: Replicatum Profession: Soldier
Sub-class: unassigned Secondary Profession: unassigned
Health: 120 Stamina: 168 Magic: 140
Regen: 1 hp/m Regen: 2 sp/m Regen: 14/hr
If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
ATTRIBUTES
Body
Strength - 12 Dexterity - 10 Agility - 11
Endurance - 14 Constitution - 12 Vitality - 10
Mind
Intelligence - 14 Wisdom - 10 Acuity - 13
Perception - 13 Imagination - 10 Cunning - 12
Spirit
Willpower - 14 Confidence - 13 Charisma - 10
Empathy - 10 Luck - 11 **Attunement -
** Harmony with selected Faith (conviction of belief)
SKILLS
Class Skills
Tier 1: Duplicate - 1 Tier 2: Tier 3:
Tier 4: Tier 5: Tier 6:
General Skills
*General life skills evaluated. Levels held in abeyance until
proven proficiency.
Willing his consciousness out of the status display and back to the “real world”, Lance found himself back in his camper (not that he really expected to be anywhere else). He had so many more questions now. Grabbing a pencil and paper out of one of the kitchen drawers, he sat back down to begin compiling a list:
Secure the area
Understand the status screen and it’s attributes
Figure out what that weird gaseous energy is
Learn more about where I am
Examine that stone ring
Figure out what a class and class skill are and how to use them
Determine what he needed to do to “unlock” the General Skills
Figure out what’s going on with the local messed up wildlife
Locate civilization
Secure an additional source of food and water
Scout the trail out for drivability
Finished with what he could immediately think of to list, he tore off the page and determined to prioritize and relist the items. He suddenly heard and felt a “DING” in his being. Seeing the now somewhat familiar flashing in the periphery of his vision, he focused on it until another message came up.
Skill ‘WRITING’ has been obtained. Proficiency displayed.
Skill advanced to Level 8
“Well that partially answers the ‘General Skills’ question on my list”, he thought. Looking at his draft list, he decided that Securing the area needed to stay at the top of the list. This clearing would now become his FOB or forward operating base. After that he needed to figure out this system and classes and skills. Learning about the area, securing additional food and water to what he had in the camper, understanding the wildlife, and scouting the trail could be lumped into one compound task he decided to label RECON. Locating civilization (if there was any), and figuring out what the swirling gas-light stuff was/did were both at the bottom of the list for now. His new prioritized list looked like this:
Secure the FOB
Unpack all the system’s status shenanigans
RECON
Locate civilization
Understand what the light show is
Once again Lance what hit with a “DING”.
Skill ‘ORGANIZATION’ has been obtained. Proficiency
Displayed. Skill advanced to Level 4
Lance felt a little bit of disappointment at the lackluster skill level, however he realized that this small list being sorted didn’t equate to a large display of proficiency.
Glancing out the window, he noticed that the sun was getting relatively near to the treetops. He didn’t have much time left to secure his FOB. Grabbing his shirt and blouse, he donned them. Opened up the gun safe he had replaced one of the closets with and grabbed his customized AR chambered in .450 bushmaster with the ‘Masterkey’ 12 gauge door breacher attachment that sat underneath the barrel. With the limited range he had to work with, the .450 would cover the distance with plenty of knock-down while the Masterkey would allow him 4 rounds of double-ought buckshot to deal with anything close that required more than a 9mm. Setting the weapon down he grabbed a drop-leg tactical holster to replace the shoulder holster for the 9mm. Grabbed a heavy leather jacket out of the closet, and geared up for some perimeter security work. Exiting the camper, he went up to the cab of the truck and opened up the back door where he had all of the training ordinance he had been transporting. Grabbing some booby-trap simulators, tripwire, and aerial flares, he filled his cargo pockets with the devices, and headed for the tree line.
Moving around the edge of the clearing, anywhere that Lance found any evidence of disturbance, he placed a combination of booby-trap simulator along with an aerial flare. If anything came through the area in the night taller than a small dog, it would pull the trip wire and set off the warning devices, creating a loud BANG and lighting up the night sky. “DING”
Skill ‘TRACKING’ has been obtained. Proficiency Displayed.
Skill advanced to Level 9
Skill ‘TRAPPING’ has been obtained. Proficiency Displayed.
Skill advanced to Level 7
“Huh”, Lance thought. “I guess TRAPPING involves the setting of booby-traps as much as actually trapping animals for pelts or food. Which reminds me, tomorrow I’ll need to set out some snares to see if I can catch some small game.” Completing his circuit of trap laying, he made it back to the camper just before the sun dropped completely below the treetops, leaving very little light. In probably 20 minutes or so it would be completely dark, except for whatever lightshow was happening in the sky tonight.
Securing the cab of his truck, Lance climbed back up into the camper and latched the door-lock. It was time to start trying to break down all the mechanics of this new system he now had. “DING”
Quest completed ‘Secure the FOB’ Energy Gained - 20
“Great”, he thought, “ another answer and add another question”. So Lance now knew that “QUESTS” existed and he could gain this ethereal “ENERGY” from completing them. Now he had questions about what constituted a quest, and how they came into existence. If his suspicions were right, everything that he had listed as a task for himself would now become a quest of some sort. He wished now that he hadn’t been so succinct, and had kept the components of his tasks listed separately. A statement from his tabletop gaming days came to mind, ‘If you’re not trying to game the system, are you even trying?”, and every video game player he ever knew was always looking for some type of exploit or easter egg in the games they were playing.
Focusing his intent on his STATUS, Lance was once again “transported” into this mindspace where he could see his status. He immediately noticed that his Energy to next level now showed 20/100, and READING, ORGANIZATION, TRACKING, and TRAPPING were now showing underneath his GENERAL SKILLS. Name, nickname, and species were all pretty self-explanatory. Faith raised a few questions. He knew that Earth had its fair share of deities, from modern “God” in Christianity, “EL” in Judaism, Allah in Islam, Brama, Vishnu, and Shiva (along with a ton of others) in Hinduism, and various other religions he was only passingly familiar with, along with several ancient pantheons including the Greeks, and the Romans. The name of his class “Replicatum”, and the welcome from “Systema” had him wondering if the Roman pantheon was going to come into play here. He had always found himself partial to the gods of the Norse pantheon. Leaving off on the matter of Faith for the moment (it had a filler in the space, and wasn’t going anywhere), he next looked at his Level, and Energy to next level. Both were relatively self-explanatory, and he just had to wait and see if when he hit the cap on Energy, that that rolled him over to Level 1, and if there were any benefits to “Leveling Up”. Looking at the next section, His “Class” was randomly assigned so he couldn’t kick himself too much about that. Now he just had to figure out what it did. He could deduce from the Latin Replicatum that it had something to do with replication, especially since his first class skill was called “Duplicate”. He was going to have to bite that bullet here shortly and figure out what it did. His profession didn’t raise his eyebrows at all, considering he had spent almost the last 3 decades (his entire ‘adult’ life) soldiering in one form or another. Be it working military intelligence, as a military police officer and then investigator, to the last several years as a demolitions handler with an engineering unit. “Sub-class” and “Secondary Profession” were pretty blase, other than them being an indicator that he had second options sitting out there at some point in time.
Moving on, Lance felt he was now getting to some very critical information. From all his experiences in gaming, either table-top role-playing games, or video games, “Health”, “Stamina”, and “Magic” (called various things across various games like Mana or Aether) were crucial stats in survival and performance. He could only assume at this time that Health would be reduced by injury or illness, Stamina by exertion, and Magic by obviously performing some kind of magic. His best guess, right now, was that Health was a factor of his Constitution and Vitality (12x10=12), Stamina was Endurance and Strength (14x12=168), and Magic was Intelligence times Wisdom (14x10=140). Just guessing, but it fits right now. His regeneration numbers looked to be based on a refill over a specified time. Health appeared to be a complete refill over a two hour time period at 1 per minute. Stamina was a little different, and looked like it was 10 times his endurance per hour, or 2 SP per minute (rounded down). Magic looked to be a direct Willpower attribute every hour. Lance could only hope that these regeneration numbers were not frozen during combat activity or extremes like he was familiar with seeing in many stories.
Moving on to his attributes, Lance began making a bunch of semi-educated guesses based on game play systems he was familiar with. Strength, he decided, was power or force. How hard he could hit or push or how much he could lift. Dexterity would be fine motor control, reflexes, and coordination. Things like nimbleness of the fingers and hands. Agility, he thought, would be gross motor control, balance, flexibility, and athleticism. The ability to move quickly, smoothly or elegantly, and complete feats of acrobatics. Endurance equates to stamina/staying power. How long you can keep going. Constitution was toughness or resistance. How hard of a hit you could take, how badly you would be cut, burned, or affected by environmental extremes. Vitality looked to be a direct display of heathfullness/recovery. Were you able to shake off the common cold, or heal a burn, abrasion, or break? All of these attributes were most directly related to his body and therefore obviously fit in a BODY category.
Next up were his mind attributes. Intelligence seemed to be the ability to acquire and process information and apply it theoretically. Wisdom he decided would be instinct, intuition, and applying knowledge practically (his lackluster 10 - which he was hoping was human adult baseline - was probably reflective of some of his poor financial and relationship decisions). Perception fit his definition of awareness (identification, organization, and interpretation of sensory information. Acuity was keenness of mind, or sensory perception. Basically quickness of thought. Cunning fit in as skill, cleverness, subtlety, and maybe a little deviousness. Imagination was the ability to visualize and/or create. He felt this would be a critical attribute in magic, crafting, and even enchanting.
And finally, SPIRIT. Willpower was, to Lance, control over his own actions, urges, and emotions. The ability to stick to the task, no matter how tedious or boring. Say no to that extra cupcake, or one more for the road. Shake off that fear or depression. Charisma would be charm or appeal. How much people wanted to trust you, or be around you, or give you the benefit of the doubt. Many of the games Lance was familiar with used charisma along with mind attributes as a base for resisting forms of manipulation. Confidence, often associated with charisma, was the ability to project a positive image even in the face of adversity. Empathy was understanding others, their point-of-view, their feelings, and the reasons for their actions. The basic ability to relate. Luck was that ethereal force that impacted one’s fate. The factor in whether events and circumstances operated for or against an individual. Finally there was Attunement.This one required no guessing on Lance’s part. The system gave him its own definition straight up on his profile. “** Harmony with selected Faith (conviction of belief)”.
The last section of his status was the skills section. In its current format it looked like he could have at least six different class skills at some point. He assumed he would have to progress in levels and maybe even complete some type of challenge or quest to gain additional class skills. His General Skills section was looking better, and he hoped to quickly gain more skills related to his life experience, and hopefully have the opportunity to even gain new ones. Feeling like he had wrapped his brain around this status business fairly well, Lance focused on exiting what he had decided to call his mindspace, and see about tackling his class skill conundrum. Opening his eyes back at his dining table he was immediately assaulted with notifications. “DING”
Skill ‘INVESTIGATION’ has been obtained. Proficiency Displayed. Skill Advanced to Level 6.
Skill ‘RESEARCH’ has been obtained. Proficiency Displayed. Skill Advanced to Level 9.
Skill ‘MATHEMATICS’ has been obtained. Proficiency Displayed.
Skill Advanced to Level 4.
Quest Complete “Unpack all the system’s status shenanigans” Energy Gained - 20
When looking at his MATHEMATICS skill, Lance once again felt a hint of disappointment at his skill level. He did have to admit that he had only displayed some simple multiplication.
Deciding he had been at his status research for a while, and giving in to the grumbling of his stomach Lance opted to take a short break and fix some supper before tackling his Duplicate skill.