I opened up my status screen again.

This was me, but it wasn’t me, me. I was a boat at the moment, but a boat wasn’t all that I was. I closed the screen, and opened it up again. And again. And again. Each time I varied what exactly I was asking for, methodically going through the odd dozen ideas in my mind for how the system worked. However, it didn’t seem to matter whether I asked for my status screen, or the boat’s status screen, or the menu, or any other game sounding term that fit what I wanted. I always got the same basic window, with the sparse details on the Ash Breeze’s components and enchantments.

I stared at the screen that filled my vision. Perhaps I was going about this the wrong way. It didn’t look like I had a separate character screen other than the one that kept showing up. Instead, what I should be asking myself is what part of this screen described me, and see if there was something I could do with that. Focusing on the Autonomous Intelligence line I felt something click, and a new screen popped up in front of the first, covering it up while not hindering my ability to read either of them. Not wanting to think too hard on that strangeness at the moment, I looked over the information that this new screen provided.

Name

Robert 'Bob' Rowland

Class

None

Body - 0

Mind - 4

Spirit - 10

Perception - 2

Experience - 30

This was more like it! Sure, it used a system of stats I wasn’t aware of, I had no class or skills, and no comparison points to know if my stats were high or low, but it was something I could work with. Body was zero, and likely would remain that way, giving I was an intangible soul or spirit or intelligence inhabiting a boat. The boat had its own physical stats, after all. Mind was four, which was something I guess. Spirit was ten, my highest stat, and suspiciously the same number that the enchantments on the boat were drawing from. It was only a guess, but it was likely that the Spirit attribute governed magic and the like. I assume Perception meant the fidelity of information that I was receiving from my senses, and a higher value would let me hear better and get more feedback from the boat. It would be nice if it would give me new senses, but I suspected that was more the range of skills.

Still, the stats covered physical, mental, magical, and sensory ability, which was just about everything, even if the categories were generally vague and vaguely general. It wasn't easy to say which attribute represented my ability to control my oars, after all. The boat was my physical body in some ways, but I controlled the oar with my mind through a magical enchantment on them. I also had those thirty points of experience sitting there on my sheet, with no idea how I got them or what they could be spent on. Skills and Class levels were reasonable assumptions, thanks to that conversation between Walter and Lirillin, but I didn’t have either. Could I purchase new ones with experience? Attempting to do so led to a new window appearing.

The following skills are currently available to you:

It looked like it was theoretically possible for me to get new skills, either for free or for experience, but I didn’t actually have access to any skills at the moment. Getting access would likely either need me to pick up a class and get skills from it, or accomplish something on my own for it to qualify. By most metrics, I was less than a day old and hadn’t really done much of note. If it was possible to manually unlock skills, then I would have plenty to keep me busy. Developing new senses was at the top of my list, but right below that was learning how to cast magic. Both because magic was valuable and awesome by itself, but also because learning magic promised to be the fastest route of improving my current situation. Lirillin didn’t seem to be a bad person; he was friendly enough with Walter and with the sailors, and was willing to do those jobs for Shellpin, but that didn’t mean I had to like him having control over me. Having my own magic would go a long way towards leveling the field between us, and would give me some tools to help defend myself if and when I revealed the truth of my existence. That wouldn’t be any time soon though, as I wanted to be a lot stronger before confronting him, even peacefully.

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Switching my focus back to the screen, I attempted to purchase attributes with experience. It didn’t matter which attribute I mentally focused on, I got the same message all four times.

You do not have the ability to raise your attributes with experience.

The notification informed me that I couldn’t raise my attributes with experience, but what it didn’t say was in some ways more important. It didn’t say it was impossible, merely that I didn’t have the ability. It might take a specific class or skill, but it implied that it was possible. The other interesting bit of phrasing was the experience requirement. I couldn’t raise my attributes with experience, but I could potentially raise them some other way. Hard work, levels in a class, eating golden apples, plenty of ideas went through my head with no way to tell which would work and which were idle fantasies, but it was better to have too many ideas than not enough.

A small part of me was concerned that I was reading too much into what might have been casual phrasing, planning my whole future out based on an interface box that might have been written by an intern just out of college. But I knew there was more to the interface than that. While it took the form of words, it wasn’t something I was seeing and reading with my eyes. It was information being communicated directly to me, and I just happened to process it in a way that made sense to me. I knew that there were ways to raise abilities with experience. I knew there were ways to raise abilities without experience that were available to me. It was the sort of assurance that could only be accepted with faith, but was no less real for it.

Looking at my empty class option finally provided me with actionable information.

The following classes are currently available to you:

Bound Spirit

Autonomous Intelligence

Ocean’s child

Unfortunately, other than the names the system didn’t provide me with any details as to what the classes themselves could do. Presumably most people had access to mentors and parents, the knowledge of everyone who had gone before them as to which classes were worth pursuing and which ones were better left untouched. All I had was myself.

Of the three options, Ocean’s Child was simultaneously the most appealing and most risky, for the exact same reason. It was the only class from a list that wasn’t tied to my current situation. A bound spirit acting as an autonomous intelligence might be what I was right now, but that didn’t mean it was what I wanted to be, and the few snippets of information I had gleaned from Lirillin suggested that a class was a lifelong commitment, where reaching level 30 in it was an accomplishment. Ocean’s child was a way for me to grow and gain abilities that related more to the fact that I was born and had lived my whole life in this world on the water. Those abilities might allow me to advance in an unexpected direction, or they might be useless to me, given my current circumstances. A water breathing skill would be invaluable to most people, but would change absolutely nothing for me. Taking the class now was simply too risky of a gamble when there wasn’t any cost to waiting a few more days to try and gather more information or somehow unlock additional classes first.

The other two classes available felt similar, in that both dealt with my current status bound to the boat, but were slightly different, in that one focused on the magical aspects of my situation as a bound spirit, and the other focused on the intelligence aspect. I could see the bound Spirit one being interesting, as it would likely increase my Spirit attribute, but once again I didn’t feel the need to choose right away. I could afford to wait and poke around the system a bit more first.

By the time I’d mentally prodded every other part of the screen to no success, the boat had made it all the way up the coast and had arrived back at Lirillin’s Lighthouse. Once again Lirill took the oars to manually move me those last few feet to the dock itself. Without someone on shore to help him disembark it took him almost five minutes to get everything unloaded and safely ashore, after which he staggered off on unsteady footing, presumably to go and sleep off the alcohol still in his system. I meanwhile was left completely alone, and with the knowledge that I wouldn’t be interrupted for the next few hours I could invest myself fully in testing out some ideas I’d had.