Level Up – Level 3 Achieved
Congratulations system user, you have survived to the third level, System awards available.
New Skill – [Mana Sense]
1 Additional Skill point earned new total -47
Use your Skill points to upgrade or buy new skills, you can also store up points for more impressive options.
Another level, Shel realized she had not followed up on the previous level, she was distracted by the barrier changing. She pulled a squared off block of wood out of the dump and perched on the end. She sighed, another thing that James would have loved, he would have enjoyed the challenge of figuring out this new situation. She smiled at the memory of James talking excitedly about a recent book he had been reading where the main character had been summoned to another world. James had spoken about how much fun it would be to explore a system driven world. Shel could remember the excitement on his face, every detail seemed vivid and intense. She was surprised, she had not thought of this conversation for years, she barely listened the first time, how could she remember it so clearly? Maybe being sent to a new world refreshed all of her memories? He spoke about how the character would try and leverage the rules of the system against itself to create opportunities for ‘broken’ growth. She did not see any immediate way to do this here, but she would keep it in mind as she had opportunity. She missed him so much, he was helping her still, even now.
She had made level three, so what skill did she get? Mana Sense, seemed simple enough, early levels seemed to be basic skills, which made sense. Checking the help menu she considered the entry.
Mana Sense (passive) – A sixth sense for Mana, with extra effort you can feel, see, taste, touch, and hear Mana.
Tasting Mana did not sound very exciting, what would it even taste like? However she could see the benefits for sensing Mana, she could potentially find powerful items in this junk pile. If people have been dumping stuff in the hole for years anything could be possible.
She returned to the second level message, Her earned skill was Item Box what exactly is Item Box? She checked the help.
Item Box – A storage area where you can secret small items away. When touching an item with your avatar you can will the item into storage in the Item Box. This hidden magical space is separate from the world, any items in storage cannot be sensed, tracked, used, or stolen. This small space is very limited and cannot store living things.
That seemed useful, especially as her current dress had no pockets. Actually that thought made her think about her clothing, she was basically wearing the clothing she died in, and that was all she had on her person. Everything else was in the baby bag, that was probably still on the bench in the cabin of the boat. ‘Well, assuming it has not been 500 years or something, I really have no idea how much time has passed, or if that even applies.’ She thought to herself. The situation hit her again, she was alone, completely alone. No community, no support system, no people who even knew who she was. Tears began to flow, she felt very lost and confused. When James died, she had thought she was alone, but looking back she could see that she was not. James’ parents, the local church, and many neighbors all jumped to help her out however they could. This was not the case in this situation, she really had no support system at all. With a ding a message popped up.
System – The system is designed to support the Dungeon cores as they perform the jobs assigned to them. Their Jobs are to concentrate Wild Mana into a usable form, spread the System to new users, and stimulate local economies.
Laughing gently, Shel sat down in the dust and cried. ‘That Calm spell of Josephine’s has definitely worn off’ she thought to herself.
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‘Item Box’ Shel thought at the heavy knife she had found, it shimmered into motes that dissipated from her hand. She considered the idea of the box and she realized that she could kind of feel the concept of the knife as available. It was going to take a while to get used to this system thing, it kept pushing things into her understanding. She focused on the knife and willed it back out, it appeared in her outstretched hand. She looked at it, it was different in some way, it took a second for her to realize what had changed. It was clean, and had lost the patina of years laying in the damp junk pile. Considering her mental item box she also realized that she could feel a concept of dirt and nastiness in her storage. She focused on this and it also appeared in her hand.
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
“Gross” she exclaimed tipping it out onto the floor. She wiped the residue off her hand on her hip.
It had taken a moment to focus and pull the knife out, so she would need to plan ahead a bit if she needed it. This was not a quick snatch, more of a coalescing of the motes. Shel checked the edge of the knife again, ‘too bad it did not make it sharp too’ she thought, she would need to address that at some point. After a few cycles of popping the knife in and out of her item box Shel felt like she had that skill basically sorted.
“Time to look at the next one, Sense Mana” She said pulling up the entry in her status. She reviewed the Mana Sense entry, it said it was a passive skill. That means that it is always on. Shel looked around the heap, she did not sense anything. Maybe there was nothing Mana related here? Shel considered her other senses, could she think of them as passive? They kind of were passive, she was always hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching. Seeing could be ‘disabled’ by closing her eyes, but that was just blocking the light, her eyes were still seeing, if a bright enough light hit her her eyelids she could still see that even with them closed. She did not normally feel her clothes touching her unless she thought about it, or they pinched or pulled. That did not mean that the feeling was stopped, just that her brain was ignoring the input. As she considered it, Shel decided all of her senses would probably fit into a passive category. Suddenly a stack of 5 dings happened and a message popped up.
New skills discovered and added.
[See] – (passive) Take light into your eyes and use the information provided to gather data about the environment around you.
[Taste] – (passive) Analyze the chemicals inside your mouth to determine rough approximations of chemical balance and concentrations. This skill is strongly dependent on its sister skill, Smell.
[Touch] – (passive) Assess pressure gradients using your skin, various levels of roughness, sharpness, and temperatures can be determined.
[Hear] – (passive) Sample vibrations from the air using the ears, this information can often be used to triangulate the source and distance of the vibration.
[Smell] – (passive) Survey chemicals found in the air passing through the nose, this works hand in hand with Taste. The synergy between taste and smell can determine rough approximations of chemical balance and concentrations.
“Gee, thanks System for being creepy and listening to my thoughts” Shel said, sarcastically.
‘I will just need to keep reminding myself to periodically check as I am wandering about’ She thought.
‘I really am just wandering about, I should make some kind of plan, what am I doing? What should I do?’ Shel thought. At least she was doing better than after James died, she really fell apart then, all she wanted to do was sleep, and cry. The only reason she did not do something drastic during her early grief was Kenzie and Arla. It was funny, having died herself seemed less traumatic than James dying, she was definitely less impacted. This felt more like a temporary setback, just a minor detour, unlike James’s death which felt more like a 500 car pile up, with fully loaded fuel tankers exploding left an right.
Shel brought the message from Josephine back up and reviewed it. She focused on the section about the girls. Josephine said she picked Dungeon core for her people type, and then she explained.
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This is the best way that I could determine to meet your request for your family to be together. However, you will need to earn enough dungeon points to allow them to join you. They will wait in a time stasis until you can purchase them as an option. I recommend that you do not activate their summons until you have firmly established yourself, as a new dungeon is fairly weak and can be destroyed quite easily.
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Shel considered the message. ‘A time stasis, so no time is passing for them?’ So outside of however badly Shel was missing them, the girls were safer where they were currently located. Shel first needed to get stronger as a Dungeon and then she could somehow pull the girls to herself. So how to get stronger? She needed to learn more about Dungeon stuff. She also needed to earn more DP. That seemed easy, she was getting points for clearing the trash from the dump she was standing in. It was a good thing the tutorial had pushed her in that direction, she had a good start to clearing the point deficit.
“The tutorial” Shel exclaimed, she bonked herself in the head a few times, she was such a Ditz sometimes. She had gotten distracted and never looked at the next section of the tutorial.