Frank woke up a few moments later, and looked around in confusion for a moment before recalling what had happened and quickly scrambled to his feet, taking in the aftermath of the attack.
The strange floating text that he recalled from moments before he passed out had disappeared, however in the corner of his vision, at the top right was a slowly blinking icon, like a little graph.
His vision almost involuntarily focused on the icon, and as he did his vision was once again filled with information. Seemingly floating in front of him was a menu of some kind. Mostly transparent he could see the destroyed street behind though it, slightly blurred. But adjusting his vision he was able to bring the menu into focus.
[Name: Frank Tanner]
[Race: Human]
[Level: 2]
[Stat Log] [Skills] [Points Store]
Frank skimmed over the menu thinking. ‘It’s like some sort of… game?’ He mused to himself. As his vision focused on the lower half of the menu the entries started glowing softly. He paused on the Stat Log for a moment, and a new menu inlaid itself on his view.
[For reaching Level 1 you have been awarded 1 Physical and 1 Magical Point]
[For defeating an enemy using Physical attacks, you have been awarded 1 Physical Points]
[Skill-less Wonder: For defeating an enemy without using Skills, you have been awarded 1 additional point in the relevant Skill Branch. (+1 Physical)]
“Huh, that seems.. Interesting.” Frank mused. After stopping focusing on the Menu for a moment it closed itself and retreated back to the unobtrusive icon in the corner of his vision.
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‘Well I can’t fault the user experience.’ He thought. ‘Looks like the more you use a ‘Skill Branch’ the more points you got for that Branch. And seemingly you could cash in Points for Skills.’
Bringing the menu back out he skimmed through the options again. As expected the Skills menu had two columns, labelled Physicial and Magical, and no entries in either. However focusing on the Skill Store produced more interesting results.
[Skill Store:
3 Physical Points Spend.
1 Magical Points to Spend.]
On intuition Frank focused on the spend option next to Magical Points.
[Magical Skills: (Skills for which you lack the prerequisites for will not be shown)
Magic Manipulation (1 Magical Point)]
‘Well I guess that makes sense, only 1 Magical Point and never had magic so obviously I would need to buy the ability first.’ He decided to himself. On a whim he decided to buy the Skill to see what would happen.
As he made the decision his menu updated.
[Skill Purchased: Magical Manipulation. (1 Magical Point)]
[Purchasing Mana Manipulation has unlocked additional Skills and/or Attributes:]
[Attribute: Mana: 10]
[Skill: Magic Bolt - 1 Mana]
Frank slowly walked over to a nearby pile of rocks to sit down as he contemplated this. Either he was hallucinating, or in a coma or something, or this was real. The aches and pains he felt from being blasted by his failed experiment spoke to this being real. But obviously he wasn’t in Kansas anymore, as the saying went. He’d played his fair share of video games, some would say more than his fair share. So the idea of Levels, Skills and Magic, wasn’t completely unknown.
For his own safety is nothing else he would have to take this seriously, he decided, after all if it was and he let himself get chewed up by that ant, or Plagued Wanderer as the system seemed to call it, then he’d be dead now. If using these skills helped in that, then it was in his best interest to use them.
‘The question is how do I use them? Like this Mana Bolt…’ His thoughts were cut off as his hands suddenly started glowing blue, an orb of light gathering in his cupped hand before blasting out from his hand with some considerable speed, impacting the ground in front of him with a loud THUNK and throwing out huge globs of mud and rock.
In the upper left corner of his vision Frank noticed a little notification.
[Mana -1: 9]
“Well that was easy.” Frank decided. “Lets see what el…” His further thoughts were drowned out by the sound of someTHING roaring in one of the nearby streets.