Gustave opened his eyes. They hurt something bad, but it was nothing compared to his headache. A deep and long “Ughhhh…” escaped his mouth, showing his discomfort to the world.
It should have been Sunday now, about 5 am judging by the light that fell on him. He felt the grass he laid on and thought back to yesterday, wondering how he ended up wherever he was now. He expected to remember some fleeting memories of the typical village party, drinking more than he should, wandering through the neighborhood, getting yelled at for disturbing sleep at the nearby playground, drinking some more, then attempting to stumble home.
He couldn’t recall any of that though. “Must have been a little more than usual.” He muttered. His voice was not strained. That was strange considering he apparently drank so much he didn’t even remember yesterday night. Testing the sounds he could make with his mouth “Ah, eh, uauayou.” he finally stood up to look where he had ended up.
Some thin trees he had never seen before stood around, mostly far apart. Between the trees he could see a few horned rabbits grazing on the grass. Further away were mountains. A tall wall was to the left of him. The wall reminded him of any medieval wall, just much higher than most of the medieval walls he had seen in his life, at about 30 meters, he guessed. 99 people laid around right next to him. Unconscious. He knew there were exactly 99 others after counting them.
“Well… Fuck me.”
He walked up to one of them and cautiously approached until he was in touching range to a middle aged man with brown hair, jeans and a black t-shirt. He held his hand over his mouth, checking his breathing.
Gustave was relieved he felt the man's breath. Adjusting his glasses he walked to the next person to repeat the process, then the next, the next and the next. All of them were breathing and those he did not test the breathing of were probably fine as well, he decided.
Gustave didn’t feel like waking anyone else. At least not without having any method to protect against general human idiocy. So he walked 200 meters to the wall, put his back against it and slid down.
Where was he? How did he get here? Was this some system apocalypse stuff? Reincarnation? Abduction? Was it some aliens? Some kingdom wanted them as heroes? Or was this one of the cultivation worlds? Did physics still apply?
To eliminate one of the many unrealistic options, he started calling out words to attempt to open a status page, but the first word “Status.” already worked, stopping his quick check.
Before him floated a see through screen he could not touch.
The Beginning
Primary Stats
Still The Beginning
Health: 0/0
Attack: 0
Defense: 0%
Available Primary Stat Points: 0
Base Health: 0
Base Attack: 0
Base Defense: 0
Diversification
Multiplication
Prestige
Consolidation
Prestige V2
Rebirth
Ascension
Equipement
Achievements
The emotions he felt upon seeing the results of his very quick test were complex. Yes this was some system stuff. He was happy to have that figured out this fast. He was angry that he was removed, ripped away, from his life.
He was annoyed at, most likely, having to grind up his stats in real life.
He was fearful of what was to come.
Did they need to fight? There was a big wall next to them. Maybe they could just enter whatever the wall protected and be protected by said wall. Fighting seemed like a really bad idea, especially if you had 0 HP, 0 Attack and 0 Defense.
Considering the Health, Attack and Defense they, he, would need to fight.
Calling out the grayed out parts revealed no new information.
"Equipment."
The Beginning
Equipment
Still The Beginning
Head: —
Chest: —
Legs: —
Feet: —
Right Hand: —
Diversification
Multiplication
Prestige
Consolidation
Prestige V2
Rebirth
Ascension
Equipement
Achievements
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He looked down. He wore high quality running boots, socks, jeans, underwear, his second best, nice and form fitting t-shirt and glasses on his nose. Apparently those were not considered Equipment.
Head, Chest, Legs, Feet and Right Hand were listed. In most games he would have to put specific equipment into equipment slots to equip them. This was not a game though. What if he found 2 fantastic pieces of equipment, intended for the same slot, could he use them anyways? Maybe even outside of the intended slots.
“Achievements.”
The Beginning
Achievements
Still The Beginning
[Still Alive 0]: After every 24 hours gain 1 Permanent Base Health, 1 Permanent Base Attack, 1 Permanent Base Defense
Diversification
Multiplication
Prestige
Consolidation
Prestige V2
Rebirth
Ascension
Equipement
Achievements
“Being alive is an Achievement. Great.” Gustave couldn’t help exclaiming out loud, but focused back on trying to figure out his status screen.
He couldn’t spend any stat points, or do anything in that direction, but he was still a little overwhelmed by his status screen.
He had 0 HP and Def. Could 1 point of damage kill him instantly? What was the difference between Health, Base Health and Permanent Base Health? Permanent Base Health meant that Base Health was impermanent, that much was obvious to him. Primary Stats indicated Secondary Stats would exist. Maybe the Base Stats had some modifiers on them from there.
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Gustave was sitting against the wall, doing nothing. Contemplating. Waiting. Waiting for something.
Waiting for something made him feel empty. He wasn’t one to do nothing, but he also wasn’t one to work for nothing. If he wanted to do that he could do some gardening. No. He would not do nothing, but he needed a goal. One that wasn’t empty. Staying alive was a goal. But staying alive is an empty goal. Could it motivate me? Yes, momentarily.
Getting back home was a goal. He took a long look at his status pages. “Unrealistic.” Was his judgment. At least for now.
Some 15 to 20 minutes later, having come to no satisfactory conclusion to his internal driving force finding process, besides the obvious, he noticed movement. One of the horned rabbits came closer and closer to him. Once it came within about 10 meters a green number appeared above its head.
Green Numbers. That means peaceful, or friendly, or undamaged, or easy opponent, or doable opponent, or it just shows the level. He discarded the last option, having seen no indication of a leveling system. He was unsure which of the remaining options were better, but one thing was certain. If it was one of the options involving combat, he wouldn’t want to be sitting down.
With his behind at the wall, he slowly put one hand on the grassy ground, one on the wall, drawing the knees closer to his chest and putting his feet down before slowly rising up.
The rabbit had brown fur, was about half a meter long, had no excessive muscles, no razor sharp teeth were visible and was overall, just a rabbit. At least, if there wasn't one little detail, the horn on its head. A horn that was turned in Gustaves direction once the rabbit had noticed him.
It shot straight towards him.
His parents had kept chickens, goats and the occasional pig in their garden. The goats liked to chew his jacket, or try to bump him with their horns. Both had easy solutions. Wear form fitting clothes and grip a horn if they get too close.
The rabbit was quite a bit faster than the goats, but as he looked at the rabbit he saw something. Its eyes were at the sides of its head. It could not see where it was running. So he took a single step to the side and tried to grab for the horn anyways.
He was able to avoid being stabbed by the horn, but he wasn’t quite able to grab it either. He was confident he could do it with a bit of practice.
The rabbit shot past him straight into the wall. It still had a green 1 hovering above its head and it was dazed. Gustave made a quick step to close the small distance and grabbed the horn. As the rabbit weakly thrashed its legs he took its neck in his other hand and quickly twisted its neck, breaking it, killing it. Then the number disappeared.
Animals might not be smart, but they knew what they were doing, their survival strategies were perfected over the years. Otherwise they would have died out. Running with full force into a wall was not a smart survival strategy.
Before it had spotted him it had behaved like a normal rabbit. Whoever, or whatever had taken them here had also taken rabbits, put a horn on them and slapped new instincts into the mix.
Gustave looked at the rabbit in his hand. Then at the people lying on the ground. He grew up in a very rural area. “Sigh.”
He walked up to them, now on the lookout for horned rabbits. They were still lying there, on the ground. Why was he the only one to have woken up?
He stood next to them for a while, hoping they would wake up by themselves. No one did, however.
He prodded a woman in the side with his foot. She did not wake up immediately but after prodding her some more, he was sure her side would be hurting, he heard her groaning.
Her hands shot to her head a second later. While blinking the sun out of her eyes her gaze settled on him. “Who are you? What did you do to me?”
“I’m Gustave. I don’t know where we are. Maybe wake the others up.” He pointed to them.
She continued. “Did you drug me? God. My head is killing me.”
“Like I said. Don’t know anything like you. The headache should go away soon though. Went away for me at least. Didn’t even notice it is gone till now. Anyways. I will look around, maybe find a gate” He gestured to the wall.
Gustave turned around to leave and made a few steps, but stopped as she called out to him. “Wait! Ugh. My head. What is that in your hand? And why do you have a 10 above your head?”
“This is a rabbit as you can see.” He holds the rabbit up so she can see it. “Don’t let it skewer you. And what do you mean you see a 10 above my head? Green?” He could not see a number above her head. Did he get something from killing the rabbit?
“Yes it is green.” She answers. “It just floats there.” She comes closer to him and extends her hand above his head, then retracts it.
“And?”
“I can’t touch it. My hand goes through it and I feel nothing.”
“Perfect. Now…” Gustave points behind her towards the 98 people still laying on the ground. Then he turns around and once again starts leaving.
“Wait! You can’t just leave them. And what did you mean with don’t get skewered?
Gustave kept walking and just called back. “Don’t care.” People were being people again. He had told her what he was going to do, warned her and woke her up and she demanded of him to stay behind. Completely unreasonable.
While on the move he called up his status screens, checking for any changes.
The Beginning
Primary Stats
Still The Beginning
Health: 40/40
Attack: 8
Defense: 4%
Available Primary Stat Points: 1
Base Health: 4
Base Attack: 4
Base Defense: 4
Diversification
Multiplication
Prestige
Consolidation
Prestige V2
Rebirth
Ascension
Equipement
Achievements
His Achievement page showed him 1 new achievement. Without any additional information,
[Combative Beginning]: +4 Permanent Base Health, 4 Permanent Base Attack, 4 Permanent Base Defense
He saw he had 1 stat point available, so he tried to will it into health. It worked and pushed his health to 50/50.
He wondered if stats even did anything. He was able to kill the rabbit, no problem. He saw no damage number pop up anywhere, he could move like normal and after pinching himself he felt like he would normally.
Other observations were that he got 10 Health per 1 Base Health, probably 2 Attack per 1 Base Attack and 1% Defense per 1 Base Defense. The most interesting was defense in this. Would 100 Base Defense give him 100% Defense? Would it reduce damage to 0? How did defense work?
Also why did he have a 10 above his head? Did he have them since he woke up, or only after getting stats? And if he got them from his stats, what did a 10 mean? He did not have 10 points at any time as far as he was aware. He had 12, now 13. Was it an evaluation of combat strength? Did the system judge him to be a 10? That might be it.
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Gustave was approaching the gate...