After repacking his kit and memorizing which pouch held which item, it was time to try the belt on.

The leather strips looped around his waist and fastened at his left hip. The toolbelt was surprisingly comfortable and didn’t restrict his movements at all, even with the canteen attached. It couldn’t have fit him better if it had been custom tailored for him, which, for all Nick knew, it had.

When he tried twisting from side to side, he noticed a leather tab sticking out from behind the clasp. Curious, he tugged on it, and the entire belt slid free from his hips, falling to the ground with a clatter. It’s an emergency release. Neat.

The last box on his inspection checklist was to test out the self-maintenance modification. He took out the hook and used it to scratch the leather surface so that he could see how long it took to regenerate the damage. It required a surprising amount of force to create what was more of an indentation than a gouge, but it was good enough for his purposes. It seemed that Nick had acquired his first piece of armor, if only across a tiny fraction of his body.

After strapping the belt back on so that he could get used to the weight, he put up the hook and took out the scissors, smiling in gratitude at the sight of the simple tool. At last, he was going to get rid of his excess hair and trim his nails properly.

With a deep sigh of satisfaction, he cut each fingernail short and smooth. He was relieved to no longer have to worry about snagging or breaking them as he went about his day. After pruning his fingers, he moved onto his toes, wincing as he probed the bruises covering his feet.

Now it was time for the real challenge in Nick’s self-imposed quest to restore his personal hygiene, hacking away at his mustache, locks, and beard. Lining the scissors flush against his skin, he battled with the mess of snarls. He began reclaiming his face inch-by-inch until his stubble was as short as he could manage without cutting himself. With each snip, tangled brown strands fell into the sand, and he felt more and more like himself. He still hated the hair covering his face, but his new look was a big step in the right direction.

Humming in contentment, he moved on to his head. He cut his bangs short and straight so they couldn’t blow into his eyes. Finally, he drew his hair back into a ponytail, then chopped it off near the base. Short enough that it wouldn’t tangle or snag on protruding branches.

The job was rough, and Nick knew that he probably looked like shit. But at least he could feel the wind on his cheeks again. Better still, he no longer had to stare at tufts of hair sticking out past the end of his nose like unwelcome houseguests.

Feeling better than he had since waking up on the island, he walked over to the display and activated the screen. He was thrilled to discover that he had another batch of notifications awaiting his perusal, and he eagerly read through his updates.

You have conditioned your body and improved the following baseline attributes:

Strength has increased from [3] to [4].

Toughness has increased from [4] to [5].

Through use, you have improved the following skills:

Size Up has increased from [1] to [2].

Foraging has increased from [1] to [2].

Awesome. That’s just what I wanted to see.

Nick was thrilled to have raised two of his physical attributes as well as his core skills. It made climbing the tree even more worthwhile, although he suspected that part of his gains had been earned earlier in the day. As the System had promised, it had been relatively easy to raise his baseline Toughness to 5. But it would be more difficult to improve via conditioning going forward.

Judging from his experiences so far, it shouldn’t be too hard to raise his Strength over the next few days, given his new exercise routine and the effort required to explore the isle. At some point, he needed to figure out the exact relationship between attributes and physical ability. But that would have to wait until he found tools to measure his performance or had a pile of KP to spare. Hopefully, I can pool my knowledge with others once I make it out of the tutorial.

With his attributes out of the way, he turned his attention to his skills. He still wasn’t sure how skills worked, but he had already discovered how useful they were. He doubted that he would have been able to find enough food without his Foraging skill. He might have even hurt himself drinking brackish water or eating unripe fruit.

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As learning more about skills had already been at the top of his list, Nick decided to spend one of his knowledge points to unlock the basic primer.

Skills

Your skills will assist you with various actions and procedures. Each skill will influence a range of related activities. For example, your Foraging skill will help you identify foods that are safe to eat and the ideal means of harvesting them in the wild.

Skills are provided by your class, profession, and other rare opportunities. Skills facilitate the growth and success of associated actions, assisting learning and reinforcing good habits. The simplest understanding of how skills enhance performance can be summarized as, “It feels right when you’re doing it right.”

To receive guidance from your skills, their value must be high enough relative to the difficulty of the task. Or, put another way, advanced feats have a minimum threshold before skills can help you accomplish them. Complex actions may be governed by more than one skill.

Skills increase slowly through training and advance rapidly when used in challenging situations. Skills that are disabled by changing classes are considered to be inactive. Inactive skills can still be used but cannot be increased until they are active once more.

Skills provided by basic classes are limited to a value of ten. Reaching this limit does not prevent you from increasing your proficiency in those areas on your own.

Skills sound like a training program that corrects mistakes and helps me learn more efficiently, rather than a brain modification that directly alters my proficiency. Kind of like a tactile augmented reality overlay. That’s a better scheme than I expected. I don’t like the idea of knowledge being beamed right into my head. But this seems more like the System watching over my shoulder and mentoring my progress.

This was the first time that he had seen the term profession mentioned. When Nick tried entering it into the custom KP prompt, it required ten points to learn more about it. It must be an advanced aspect that won’t be relevant until later. Still, it’s nice to have a heads-up as early on as possible.

There was also a reference to changing classes. Unfortunately, the details weren’t included in the entry. Once again, the System seemed to be tailoring the text to his specific situation while providing tidbits on related topics as well. Almost like it was going out of its way to be helpful in teaching him the basics of his new life, which he deeply appreciated.

The other mechanic that he was curious about was how levels were obtained. Most games rewarded experience for defeating enemies and completing quests. But Pax had mentioned that wasn’t the only way to grow that was sanctioned by the System.

While he was willing to kill if he had to, Nick didn’t like the idea of slaughtering peaceful creatures simply to fuel his own advancement. No matter what happens in the days ahead, I’m not a sociopath. I’m not going to massacre whatever crosses my path for slivers of experience and loose change. It would be easy to lose myself and go full murderhobo once I’m stronger. That isn’t who I am, and it isn’t the person I want to become.

He spent his KP, then let out a sigh of relief when he started to read. While it seemed that fighting and conflict were important for growth, he wouldn’t have to kill to advance unless he chose to.

Levels

Levels represent the crystallization of experience inside the body. Experience is acquired in situations that cause you to challenge your limitations and expand your capabilities. Especially when doing so entails a high degree of risk. It can also be earned by completing quests.

When critical thresholds are reached, this energy acts as a catalyst, enhancing your attributes along paths determined by your class (or at your discretion in the case of free points).

In addition to developing attributes, levels improve your baseline stamina, mana, and health in a linear progression. The effective values for each form of vital energy are heavily modified by additional factors, such as traits, attributes, and abilities.

Reaching certain milestones will unlock additional features. For example, a new class can be chosen at Level 25, and reaching Level 50 will unlock secondary attributes (one of the prerequisites for advancing to Tier 2).

Awesome. As he had been hoping, Nick had been given some tips on how to level up, and now he knew how to change his class. Unlocking the primer on experience would still be a good choice when he picked up more KP, as he wasn’t clear on several details related to the process.

As shitty as it felt to start off with a basic class, at least the free point it awarded with each new level let him develop his attributes in whatever direction he desired. When he found his next batch of knowledge points, he would have to decide between learning more about specific attributes, which would help him allocate his free points as efficiently as possible, and abilities, even though he had none at the moment.

Nick also wanted to learn about health, mana, and stamina. They were obviously important but weren’t listed on his profile. Once he took care of all the basic terms he had added to his list, he hoped to find out more about magic in general, as well as the item schema used by the System. But that was a worry for another day.

After spending his KP, he had plenty to mull over, especially with what he had learned from his climb. He had only found a single berry on the way back and was running low on food. But what he had would tide him over until morning, and he still had a canteen full of water. That meant it was time for another evening spent exercising and planning.

He kept his workout light since his body was aching. After forcing himself back onto his feet so that he could take a quick lap around the elevated portion of the beach, Nick tucked himself into his hole in the sand. He stretched out while watching the sunset over the ocean, content with how his day had gone.

He spent some time trying to get the wand to do something before giving up for the day and closing his eyes.