The first Number, strength, is at its base the simplest of the five. The strength Number has been been found to be relatively proportional to all slow-twitch muscle efficiency, some fast-twitch muscle efficiency, and body density and resiliency. In layman's terms, a person with a high strength Number has much higher endurance and will be much less likely to be injured than someone with a low strength Number. The only commonly accepted sub attribute of strength is endurance.
- Excerpt from “The Five Numbers, 5th Edition”
I stare in shock at my arm for what feels like days, but what can't have actually been more than ten seconds.
I had worked so hard on those Numbers. They couldn't just...be gone.
Could they?
I honestly have very little idea of how the Numbers work. I had always simply taken them for granted. All I know was that as my skills in each of the five major attributes increase, my Numbers increase correspondingly. What I do know, was that I had never heard of someone's numbers going down, much less being reset to zero. I had only ever seen one arm with all zeros on it before, and that was seconds after my baby cousin was born.
I thought frantically, yet at the same time strangely slowly. Do the Numbers reflect my skills, or do my skills reflect my Numbers? I had always assumed previously that the Numbers were simply a reflection of my skill level. But...could they actually control what my skills were? Could my skills simply be a reflection of the Numbers?
Wait, that didn't make sense though. To increase my Numbers, I would practice and practice to get better at my skills which would result in my Numbers increasing, not the other way around.
I clutch my head. My thoughts seem to be bouncing back and forth erratically in my skull, but at the same time moving through molasses. The erratic thoughts seem like the natural panicked response that a situation like this deserves, but the molasses...
Wait -- my skills reflect my Numbers, my Numbers reflect my skills...
I slowly put the pieces of the puzzle together, like a one-year old trying to put toy shapes into the corresponding holes, at a snail's pace and mostly through trial and error.
My weakness, my slow thoughts, my clumsiness. I'm not sick, that's simply who I am. Those are my skill levels.
With this realization, the fourth Number, the Number for intelligence, switches from a zero to a one.
A wave of relief flows through me, followed quickly by a wave of dismay. All the work I've ever done, basically my entire life has been erased in the course of a short nap. Well, maybe it wasn't all that short, but still. On the other hand, at least I'm not stuck in this weakened state, and there remains potential for improvement.
After coming to these conclusions, I finally take the time to examine the other changes. The sixth number is exactly one hundred, and is located on the palm of my left hand. Other than that Number and the five little triangles above each of the other Numbers, there seems to be no change. I hesitantly reach out and touch the triangle lowest on my wrist, and spasm back in surprise when the Numbers change.
With that little touch, the Number for Charisma raises from zero to one, and the Number on my palm decreases from one hundred to ninety-nine.
I may not have all of my gears turning as fast as they usually are, but even in my current state I can deduce the most likely meaning of this. I have ninety-nine chances to raise my other Numbers, I assume by one each time.
I have no idea if there are any limits on the way I can distribute my Numbers, but I figure now is not the time to find out. The first priority is getting back to the cabin, and then civilization, so that I can potentially get my original Numbers back.
Of course, I'm very relieved that I have at least some Numbers, but even fully distributed, the hundred comes nowhere close to my original Numbers.
With my course of action decided, I slowly stand back up. Now that I know a little more about what's going on, I can recognize my weakness not as a normal sickness but simply a symptom of a body that has a zero strength attribute. My walk back to the cabin is slow and plodding, at least for the first five steps, at which point I trip over a hidden rock and fall once again to my hands, luckily not hurting myself.
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
So maybe the idea of going back to the cabin without increasing ANY of my Numbers was a bit foolish. I quickly assign ten points into both my strength and dexterity Numbers.
With this action, I can actually feel myself getting stronger. It's an unnatural and disconcerting, yet not altogether unpleasant, feeling, like every muscle in my body just woke up and drank a strong cup of coffee simultaneously.
I'm not sure whether ten points is enough to make it safely back to the cabin, so I assign ten more to each just to be safe, and decide to call it good for now. With the number fifty-nine on the palm of my hand, I proceed back to the cabin.
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The walk that took only ten minutes when entering the forest takes a solid thirty minutes to retrace, partly due to my plodding pace and party due to taking a more roundabout path. Finally though, I walk out of the trees into the clearing next to the cabin, and my jaw drops.
The cabin is gone. Where once was a beautiful scenic two-story oasis of modern technology is now a smoldering husk of a building, literally. Only two of the walls seem to be still standing, with the rest only a pile of ashes. I can still see a few open flames on the corner, and now that I'm paying attention to it, I can feel a slight warmth radiating out of the pile of ashes, along with a smoke trail that seems to reach miles into the sky.
How could I have missed that smoke trail on the hike through the forest? It's huge, and stretches what seems like forever upward.
With a lurch of my stomach, I realize my mistake. The sub-attribute perception is directly tied to the wisdom attribute, and my Number for wisdom is still sitting at a big fat zero. With very little hesitation, I apply twenty points into both intelligence and wisdom.
I feel like my mind and senses are overwhelmed. I suddenly notice so much more about the situation -- the bus is missing, the shed that is kept separate from the cabin is still standing, and there's a distinct lack of any human noises for a location that only a few hours ago housed thirty high-school students. My mind is able to piece together so much more, as I consider the possibilities of what happened here.
My heart almost stops in horror as I think about what I was doing by the stream. I had been messing around with my Numbers, potentially permanently, with a whopping intelligence Number of one -- it's a miracle I didn't do something idiotic like increase my charisma to one hundred and leave everything else at zero. I now feel much more confident in my body, my thoughts, and my actions.
After a second of thinking, I come to another realization. Why am I so confident now? My current intelligence is twenty-one. Twenty-one. Most five year olds have higher intelligence Numbers than that. Until I get my original numbers back, I need to be careful and second guess every decision I make, no matter how small.
Upon reaching this conclusion, both my intelligence and wisdom Numbers increase by one.
With the weirdly mixed feeling of shattered self-confidence from realizing my weak state and the satisfaction of increasing my Numbers the old-fashioned way, I proceed closer to the cabin.
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I slowly walk around the cabin, the unnatural stillness of the environment persuading me to keep quiet as well. From what I can tell, no part of the once two-story building remains unscathed, and I am leery of trying to explore any closer to the still smoldering husk, imagining being buried under five hundred pounds of rubble with a strength Number of -- I glance at my arm -- twenty-two. It seems like my extended walk through the woods had at least some benefit.
I have yet to see any evidence that any of my fellow students were around when the building went down, and aside from a pair of tire tracks in the road, I see no evidence of any humans having ever been here. Aside from the giant torched cabin, that is. With a long sigh, I decide to check the shed, which I hope will yield better clues, or at the very least a phone to let someone know I was left behind.
How could I have been left behind anyway? Even I, a student who barely interacts with the other kids around me, know that there were exactly thirty-one students, plus one teacher and one teaching assistant, on this trip. With the amount of money my parents paid for me to attend, you'd think they'd at least make a concerted effort to make sure there wasn't a student missing before leaving.
Even with a fire and collapsing building, I can't imagine authorities will take more than thirty minutes to get here in a fancy helicopter, and although I'm no expert on fires, it seems like the fire has been going for at least that long. Why isn't this place swarming with firemen? Or, at the very least, some concerned park ranger?
Either way, my best bet will be to hole up somewhere safe and comfortable until the authorities come and find me, and someone can straighten out the mess that my life has seem to become within the past seven hours. Actually, my best case scenario would be for me to find a phone in the shed that I can use to call someone to immediately come back and get me, but I don't feel like that is terribly likely -- it's not a nice looking shed -- although I still hold out a tiny bit of unrealistic hope for it. The worst case scenario is that the shed is locked and I'm forced to spend the night outdoors until someone realizes I'm missing and comes back for me tomorrow.
Sure, it'd be a little scary out here alone, but I don't THINK there'll be too many wild animals this close to the cabin, and the wreck that used to be my sleeping arrangements is warm enough that I won't be too uncomfortable in the cold night air. Tomorrow will still not be fun no matter what happens, trying to sort out with the proper authorities how to get my Numbers back, but there's no way I've been the only person in the world this has happened to...can it? I'm sure that they, whoever "they" is, have a process to get the Numbers back.
True, if I'm forced to spend the night outdoors, I won't enjoy it much, but as far as worst case situations go, it's not too bad.
That is when I see the blood.
S: 22 (+22)
D: 20 (+21)
W: 21 (+21)
I: 22 (+22)
C: 1 (+1)
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