Chapter 5: Skills unlocked attributes unlocked.

I heard a loud roar which broke the peace that had surrounded me in the forest so far. The roar was loud enough to let me know that a monster is nearby. Appraisal wouldn’t work until I could look at it. Panicking and nervous, with my heart beating loudly I held my sharpened branch in one hand and took out a medium sized rock from my inventory in the other hand. I felt the hair at the back of my neck stand up and I knew the predator was behind me. As soon as I turned, I saw a creature like a wolf strolling towards me. I think I might have pee’d my pants (just a little bit). By the way I don’t know if the wolf was small, medium nor large, having never seen one in real life but it was large enough for me to wonder what the heck was I doing standing here with broken branch and a stone in my hand. I questioned my sanity as well, believe me.

The predator stopped at a distance and took a stance and growled at me. The intimidation tactics worked but having no other choice I tried to calm down, even though I felt like my heart was in my mouth and mentally I was prepared to die any moment now.

As the predator rushed towards me, I tried to poke the claw coming towards me with the branch and smash the rock in my head on its head. Branch of course scratched and broke, with the claw coming towards my shoulder. But my rush to use the rock to smash turned my shoulder at an angle that avoided deep injuries. I think round one was a draw as my rock hit the monster between its eye and ear causing it to yelp in pain. Looking at the predator at such close quarters had further instilled feeling of deep fear in my heart. I took out another rock and another branch, while the predator was busy getting angry at me. With another roar, as the wolf jumped towards me, I tried to move my body into closer to it head, trying to avoid its claws (useless of course) and smashed another rock – I don’t know if it was my luck or someone was watching over me, but this rock was a bit sharp, and this sharp end got embedded in its brain due to the force of my desperation.

The wolf yelped in pain for a second before it was dead with its brain matter oozing out. I fell on the ground on my knees, scared, scared and more scared. I think I was more scared now than I was before the fight. There was an element of shock in my eyes – It was me who killed this wolf – right?

I was badly injured, and intense pain was reverberating from my shoulder and my chest where I could feel the deep gauges left by the wolf’s claw. I lied down on the ground ignoring the dangerous surroundings and tried to stabilize my breath. Every breath hurt and drew blood leaving my shirt and jacket further soaked in blood. After what felt like hours and when I could think beyond pain, I first took off my jacket and tied it like a torniquet around my chest. Tight bandage made me gasp with pain. There was nothing I could do but take shallow breaths and try to relieve the pain slowly. I saw my screen flashing with multiple notifications. Where I was expecting to see the corpse was nothing but 3 items – my very first loot.

There were too many things to check and my smile for the first time since landing on this planet was heartfelt and genuine. First notification was as I had predicted a choice.

Skill 2 – choose (please?)

1. Smasher level 1 (When smashing with fist the effect of strength up by 5%, additional 1% damage if the weapon used to smash is level 2 or above) – with this skill host could use club or a mace as your main weapon or how about a hammer?!?

(why was the screen starting to sound like those impertinent systems I had read about)

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1. Slasher level 1 (When slashing the damage increase by 5%, sword, katana, dagger, knife any sharp weapon maybe used for the purpose of this skill)

2. Loot level 1 (Additional 10% loot, not applicable to any other source of loots except monster killing)

This is when I realized that system was giving me 2 choices directly related to my actions and an additional choice, which was super seductive. I wanted to say that I chose Slasher, but you know there is no one who can give up on the greed for more loot. Praying that these skill options would show up again when in the future, I confirmed my second skill to be Loot level 1.

Notification

“Killed small wolf (level 1) exp 100”

Level up

With this finally my attributes panel was open, so I guess this system or whatever it is, was waiting for my first fight. I wanted to say that the wolf wasn’t small as that thing was easily towering over me, but then I hadn’t really seen my new self, so I didn’t know how tall I was.

Name: Caishen

Age: 16 years

Location: unprotected area

Level: 1 (Exp 0/500)

Attributes:

Physical

Strength – 6/10 wounded and bleeding (Physical power and carrying capacity)

Endurance – 5/10 wounded and bleeding (stamina and health)

Agility – 4/6 wounded and bleeding (coordination and reflexes)

Mental

Intelligence – 12 (deductive reasoning, memory, logic, and rationality)

Wisdom – 10 (self-awareness, perception, and insight)

Charisma – 8 (persuasiveness, leadership, and planning)

Skill 1: Appraisal level 1 (able to see profile information from basic to detailed depending upon the level difference compared to the skill user)

Skill 2: Loot level 1 (Additional 10% loot, not applicable to any other source of loots except monster killing)

Skill 3: locked (available at level 5)

Life Skill Collect – Basic (Increase in harvesting speed – 5%, Able to collect loot without touching)

Inventory: 2 pieces of bread (not dry), 2 medium sausages, 1200 mint leaves, 999 sweet berry, 2 broken branches, 3 small rock, 437 dry branches

The bottle of water was in my hand after all.

There was no HP or MP listed so I couldn’t tell whether I had cultivation or magic capability or not or maybe I could awaken them at some later point just like the skills that have unlocked so far. It was interesting that first 2 skills unlocked based on my action, but the third skill would unlock based on level and I also had a life skill which seemed to be a separate set altogether. Oh well! There is some progress.

I checked the loot after looking at my attributes and wondered if the three pieces I saw appearing would change to four with my new skill. Nope. Still three. Things don’t change in retrospect I believe.

Loot: 1 wolf fang, 1 wolf fur, 5 kg wolf meat

As per my appraisal, the fur could be used for making clothes or as a blanket to ward off cold and the meat was edible with the promise of deliciousness.

I really wished I had a chance to appraise the wolf and check its stats, but the body had already disappeared so no luck. I had a weird feeling that the fight had been a bit too easy as if there was a force protecting me. Both my actions could have resulted in my death or fatal injury but my act of trying to smash the wolf skulls had somehow allowed hair breadths escape each time. Both scenes kept repeating in my memory in a loop as I kept trying to figure out what I did and how.

My objective for the day had been met. My attributes and skills were unlocked, and I had some additional food in my inventory. It was past nearing evening, so I decided to head back to the safe room.