The blue screen floated in front of me as if in defiance of reality.
I blinked.
The first one to appear started to become opaque and slowly dissolved into nothingness.
My tears of pain, that were falling just moments ago, stopped and left only wonder in my heart.
“Carl… can you see this?” I asked as I pointed my uninjured hand toward the “Level up!” window.
“Holy mother Kilo…! There is so much blood!” He said, ignoring my question. His eyes were big as saucers and glued to my still bleeding right hand. Blood was dripping on the ground and the boy’s complexion was starting to turn pale. He was probably just realizing how bad my injury was.
The pain was terrible but somehow the absurdity of what I was seeing in front of me managed to take my mind off it.
“Open… my… Status Window?” Slowly, I read aloud what was written on the notification. Just as I finished, I realized that it was the first time I read something in English since coming to this world.
As soon as my voice was out, an even bigger screen popped at my face.
Name:
Kilo Creeks
Current Level:
2
Exp: 12/400
Total Exp: 112
Base Attributes:
Bonus:
Total:
Strength:
1
0
1
Dexterity:
1
0
1
Constitution:
1
0
1
Perception:
1
0
1
Mind:
1
0
1
Available Points:
5
Skills:
N/A
Perks:
N/A
I stared at it as my mouth opened wordlessly.
Stunned, I hardly realized as the other kids finally arrived where me and Carl were. The whole situation had lasted only a few seconds, and since Carl had been the chicken in the game, they had both been pretty far from us on the field. Seeing what had happened from up close, they both rushed to help me.
“Kilo!” Ashley came to me and took a piece of cloth from a pocket on her dress. She wrapped my hand and immediately applied pressure.
Seeing Ashley already handling things, Thaddeus instead crouched by the rat and stared at its cracked head.
“Dad told me those things appear sometimes when the farmhands are sowing the field… He said they get really mad if you step on their burrows.” He said as he got up and gave a soft kick to its corpse.
“It doesn’t matter, Thadeus! Kilo is bleeding, we have to take him to his mother!” She doesn’t stop fussing around me as she yells at the boy.
“Are you okay Kilo? Can you walk? Your hand needs stitching!” She took my head between her hands and shook it, trying to make my eyes focus on her face. But I couldn’t.
My eyes were still glued to the blue screen.
“Do you guys… see… this?” I asked once again, pointing with my free hand.
Carl was still staring like a statue at the bloody mess pooled on the ground, but this time both Ashley and Thadeus looked in the direction of the screen. As their eyes searched the horizon, however, it became very clear they couldn’t see anything.
“What…?” Ashley asked.
“Err… maybe he has hit his head, Ash. I think you are right; we really should hurry and take him to his momma.” Thadeus for once looked worried.
Slowly, the floating window disappeared and I let the bigger children lead me home, dazed.
image [https://i.ibb.co/RCgQMXF/Picture1.png]
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
The way back from the field passed in a flash. I was still in a daze thinking about the blue screens and mostly ignored the frantic nervousness of Thadeus and Ashley. Carl seemed pretty affected by the gory scene and walked in silence the whole way.
When we got back to my house, Anne was still working on her linen threads. Seeing her, the older kids immediately blurted an anxious string of words. They stuttered the whole way, but still, I couldn’t help but praise their sense of responsibility on the back of my head. They were the older kids and society here would hold them somewhat accountable for what happened to me while playing with them. I was supposed to be only 5 years old, after all. Nevertheless, they did the best they could have done and delivered me to my parent.
Anne’s reaction when seeing my bloody hand was somewhat unexpected coming from the doting mother that she was. She didn’t panic or cry out in alarm as I expected. What she did was much more pragmatic: She shooed the other kids, fetched a jar made of glass from the cupboard in her room, and put me on her lap. Using some clean water she had already boiled over the fire, she proceeded to clean my wound gently.
Enduring the pain as best as I could as the woman cleaned the blood and dirt; I couldn’t help but be a little proud for not crying out even without having good old anesthesia. I kept my silence and she didn’t say anything either. Was she mad at me?
But then she finally opened the glass jar she had brought and took a spoonful from it. It contained a green paste that gave off a strong herbal scent. My eyes watered just by looking at it.
“I am sorry dear. This is going to sting a bit. Be the strong little boy I know you are, okay sweetie?” For the first time, she looked truly sorry for me.
Uh-oh.
Without giving me time to answer, she splattered the paste on my open wound.
It burned as if liquid fire was being injected inside my hand.
“AAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRG!” I screamed and twisted my body, trying to pull my hand from her to no avail. She had prepared herself for this and was positioned in such a way that my little body had no chance of escaping her grasp.
She took another spoonful and splattered again on the places where there still wasn't enough medicine.
I screamed again, crying for her to stop over and over again. She didn’t listen to me.
She smeared the paste on my hand over and over again and then followed to do the same on the scratches that the rat’s claws had left on my forearm.
Slowly, the sensations from my hand were numbed until I couldn’t feel it anymore. I was not sure if it was the intended effect of the paste or if my body was just having some mercy on me.
When she was finished, I was spent. My vision was blurred and I was not sure if was because of the tears or the pain. I groaned again.
“Shush, dear.” Anne said as she blew softly over my hand. “It is done.” She told me kindly as if she hadn’t just subjected me to hell on earth.
Without strength, I just nodded as she wrapped my hand and carried me to my bed.
When she left me there, I fell asleep in seconds.
divider [https://i.ibb.co/RCgQMXF/Picture1.png]The following days were a blur.
After applying the paste to my injury, Anne woke me up a few hours later to clean off the substance and stitch my wound closed. Having endured the medicine, I noticed that seeing her pierce my skin over and over again was surprisingly painless. I was not sure if I had gotten tougher or if I was still under the effect of some anesthetic property of the paste. I suspected the second option was far more likely.
When she was done, I looked at my hand and one thing became very clear to me: I was going to have a scar for the rest of my life. An ugly one.
By the final result, you could clearly see that my hand had been chewed pretty badly. Some of the flesh was even missing, probably swallowed by the creature. I would be lucky if I didn’t lose any of my hand’s movement when it healed completely.
When Ruther got home and saw my injury, he asked Anne what had happened. On hearing the story, his only answers were a series of grunts followed by a “You should be more careful when playing around” directed at me. The man always felt pretty irritable, but that day I was extra careful not to bother him.
Following that, I was prohibited from leaving the house and ordered to spend the next days resting in my bed. To help matters, Anne prepared some bitter teas that made me sleepy and allowed me to sleep for most of the day.
“This tea makes me sleepy mom… What is it?” I asked one day.
“The creature that bit you was very dirty, sweetie. It could have carried a lot of diseases. Your father discussed it with the healer and he said you should drink this for the next 3 days.” Hmmm. So, it was probably some kind of herbal antibiotic that these people used. The fact that it made me sleepy was just an extra.
The visage of those glowing red eyes troubled my sleep for the following nights. I wasn’t sure if it was because I was still so little, or if it was because rats from the wild were supposed to be bigger than the ones I was used to, but that rat felt way bigger than he had any right to be. The glowing eyes also were strange. Maybe it was a species native to this world?
Up until now, most of the flora and fauna I had had contact with had been pretty similar to Earth’s. There were some fruits and vegetables I didn’t have a name for, but that was it. Granted, I hadn’t been taken very far from my home by Anne, but still. If I wasn’t reminded every night of the two moons in the sky, I might have thought I had simply time-traveled to medieval times.
That was… until that moment. The moment when those blue screens appeared in front of me.
After seeing them, nothing was the same.
The past few years had been endurable due to the novelty and excitement of having been reborn in another world. The very idea of getting to know and experience something completely different from my previous life had ignited the motivation to live that I had lacked before. Pushing myself to learn the language and understand people here a little better also contributed to it. After having actually lived here for a few years, however, that fire had been growing fainter. Contrary to what I expected, life here was generally “worse” than in my previous life. Things were harder, people had to live with much less comfort, there was less available entertainment and everyone smelled. I could list a hundred little things that would make the factual superiority of modern Earth living standards clear. And despite all that, people here seemed happier than back there. People laughed at simple and dork jokes, savored plain food, got excited with meaningless events, and smiled for no reason at all.
I didn’t get it.
Once again, despite being in another world, I had been feeling myself falling into the same hole I had in my previous life. Having to pretend to be a child didn’t help it. Little by little, things had been losing its colors. I feared that sooner or later I would give up and let nature run its course. Let go of my hold over my consciousness and maybe be overwritten by the kid I was supposed to be. Thinking that maybe, just maybe, that kid still had a chance of figuring everything out and actually being happy.
But the Status Window changed everything. The idea of its existence was enough to turn that smoldering flame into a raging inferno.
Statuses. Levels. Attributes. Skills!
All the things I had dreamed about back on Earth, trying to numb myself from what was actually real. The things that I had told myself over and over again that would make a life interesting to live. Could it be? Could it be here I would finally get to live them in my bones? Transform those sleepless nights that I spent grinding away to make some fictional character stronger into a prelude to something greater?
Thinking about all that, I plotted while I waited for my hand to heal.
First, I tested opening the screen again. As I suspected, all I had to do was say the words [Status Window] again and the blue screen materialized in front of me. First, I experimented in my room, away from anyone, and then I did the same thing in front of Anne.
“What did you say, dear?” She asked as she took her eyes off the vegetables she was chopping and looked at me.
“Err… nothing.” I answered, lamely. The status screen blocked half of my vision and would be very obvious to her if she could actually see it. Once again, she not mentioning it was all but a confirmation that only I could see it.
Next, when in my room again, I tried to make further interactions with it.
“What is… my Current Level?” I asked, talking to the screen. I could see it clearly written on the window, but I wanted to know if it could receive prompts.
Unfortunately, I got no response.
I tried the same thing with the other fields written there, using different combinations of words, to no avail. It seemed there was no “Help” section for this thing.
It was only when I said the name of an attribute, on its own, that I got a reaction.
“[Strength].” I said.
A smaller screen immediately appeared in front of me.
Confirmation
How many attribute points do you want to allocate to [Strength]? (You have 5 available points)
“Zero!” I said, both panicked and excited at the same time. I still wanted to take more tests before deciding anything!
I tested if the same prompt appeared for the other attributes and then tried to do the same for Skills and Perks. The other attributes worked, but Skills and Perks gave me no reaction.
After that, I tried one thing that had come to my mind since the first time I had opened the screen. Having to say the words out loud was quite bothersome and would restrict me from doing so in front of others if I didn’t want to be questioned too much. It would be really useful if I could actually do it just by thinking about it.
If this thing appeared just for me, it was pretty clear that it was somehow connected to my mind. An illusion or something. Hoping that it somehow also could understand when I wanted it to appear didn’t sound too farfetched to me.
Thinking about that, I tried concentrating and focusing on making the screen appear.
Status Screen.
…
Status Screen!
STATUS.
SCREEN.
[Status Screen].
The blue screen popped at my face and I laughed in excitement. It worked!
It took a few tries but I soon realized the trick was focusing on the strange feeling I got when I actually said the words out loud. At the same time, I also realized that if I said the words out loud without focusing on this feeling the screen wouldn’t pop up.
“Status screen.” Saying the same words as before didn’t trigger the screen if I didn’t have the intent to do so. Weird.
In fact, everything about these blue screens was weird. Despite my excitement at the possibilities that its existence presented, deep down I knew my doubts about it were massive. First of all, did it work? Despite looking exactly like the character sheet of old MMORPGs and referencing myself as the character, would it really make me stronger like I hoped?
And even if it did… What the hell. Where did this come from? I hadn’t heard anyone talking about anything resembling Statuses, Skills, or Attributes in any of my last 5 years here. The fact it only appeared to me was also worrisome. Was it just a hallucination of my sick brain? Was I finally losing it?
If it did work… What did it mean for the rest of this world? Was this world actually a fantasy world? Were there dragons, heroes, magic, elves, and princesses? I had heard about royalty from the talks between the adults, but I just thought it to be the typical feudal society sort of nobility. Could nobility here actually refer to knights and great warriors of fantasy? All the talks I had heard up until that day took a new light. There had been a lot of things that I had considered as pure superstitions of these people. They talked about beasts in the woods and monsters that would take you away if you were a bad child. Were those real? I had no clue!
Multiple lines of thought swirled around my head and I could feel my body temperature rising. The old pain in my chest I had been so used to back in my previous life started acting out and I knew it was the makings of a panic attack. One of the usual symptoms of the anxiety I had fought against for so long. Apparently, it had followed me here.
Taking a few deep breaths and shaking my head, I tried to calm down.
Right.
Focus on what I can do. On what I can find out.
Thinking about it rationally, what I had to do now was pretty obvious.
Everything was dependent on whether the Status Window was real or not. Could it really do what I thought it did? I had to test it.
First, I would need a baseline of my performance on something, to compare its effects against. Then I would use it to distribute those 5 available points I had. And finally, I would compare my new performance against the baseline. The basis of the empirical method.
Now, what I had to decide was what test would be best quantified in a concrete manner that left no doubt about any changes.
Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Perception, or Mind?
Which one should I choose?