Despite his best efforts to remain vigilant, Raif found himself thinking about what it would entail if this dream was real. Even if he gained an inordinate amount of strength and skill along with the knowledge to help people through the supposedly coming cataclysm. The only way he could see a mass panic and riot being avoided was through martial law, and he wasn't in any position to use his knowledge to make the decisions that would need to be made in order to save the maximum number of people. He would need to find a way to gain influence despite his relatively low rank and lack of experience. Second Lieutenants were the butt of most Army jokes because they rarely had any experience, but technically had a lot of authority. This combination generally led to a lot of mistakes that were hilarious in peacetime and deadly in wartime.

Although Raif hadn't gotten the opportunity to deploy yet, he wouldn't until he completed his degree and was fully trained as an Engineer Officer. For obvious reasons the Army wasn't too keen on sending untrained personnel overseas to lead troops. With a deployment out of the question and a large scale impact unlikely at best, Raif decided he needed to set his sights on convincing his Company Commander to pull in the unit with their families and any they could convince to try to make things work from there. The Captain was a pretty reasonable guy, and if Raif could provide a strong demonstration and explain everything he might listen. Past that he had little hope as he probably wouldn't even be able to get a meeting with the Battalion or Brigade Commander, much less convince them to mobilize. After all the Army was known for a lot of things, and adaptability just wasn't one of them with major equipment or philosophy changes often taking decades to push through due to the size of the organization.

The only changes that ever seemed to happen quickly were something collectively referred to as “good idea faerie's”, which were often ideas that seemed good in theory and were implemented at higher levels, however by the time they got to the Company level were ridiculous and stupid. A great example for him was the idea of having a ground guide walk along a vehicle as it was moving forward in a staging area, sure it made sense in theory as having your co-driver on the ground kept the speed down and someone was able to see better from the ground than the often limited visibility conditions of an armored vehicle. The execution of course ended up being taken way too far and things had gotten to the point where he had seen Soldiers get in trouble for not having a ground guide for a gas powered cart... Or the requirement to wear a reflective belt at all times during low light conditions, which made sense in garrison near public roads when a driver might not see a Soldier crossing the road on foot. Of course the execution ended up with the reflective belt being worn in ALL low light conditions, even when deployed in a hazardous combat zone like Afghanistan if you were on a base and not actually outside the wire. This of course made the millions and millions of dollars spent on developing better camouflage for the uniforms more and more ironic and about politics rather than tactical need. Even if it cost a lot to develop the pattern, what possible use could there be in changing the uniform of the entire army when they were going to spend most of their time wrapped in or carrying a reflective belt?...

Realizing he was letting himself daydream about the stupidity of the Army and hoping there would be time later to plan how to save as many as possible, Raif focused again after sparing one more thought about the irony of daydreaming inside what was supposed to be a dream before focusing his attention back on his surroundings. Ahead he could see the a large stone gateway at what appeared to be the end of the path. Realizing it must be the portal to Vanos John had mentioned, he decided to scout around a bit and find a good place to read through the book he had been given first. Looking around with a less wary perspective after his meeting with John, Raif took a moment to appreciate the beauty of the forest. The trees were enormous, seemingly made from the same material as the branch John had been carving, though they definitely weren't like any trees John had ever seen before. To be fair he had grown up surrounded by Pine and Cedar trees, so he wasn't exactly an arborist even though he did plan on learning much more about different wood types later on.

The gateway that appeared to be a portal of some kind hadn't changed and other than John back in the clearing nobody else seemed to be around so Raif decided to sit down on a nearby fallen tree and check out the book he had gotten from John. There was no telling what was waiting on the other side of the portal after all. While John had mentioned there would be tutors, he hadn't said anything about what it would take to earn some time getting instructed by them. Having received the book before getting a chance to find out he decided he would be better off taking the time to read and understand the book before going any further. He was also hoping that someone else from Earth wouldn't be too far behind him after John's comment from earlier and wanted to have the opportunity to compare notes and maybe form a team before heading any further.

Raif settled down a few meters behind the portal and off to the side. He wanted anyone coming towards the portal to be able to see him, but was concerned that someone may be able to get the drop on him coming from the other side of it. After getting settled he pulled out the book, which had an unremarkable leather cover and no title. Opening it up he found a table of contents listed out with the names of several of what he could only assume were skills and attributes. The first entry in the book was titled simply “Strength” and John quickly read into it as this was the area which concerned him the most.

Strength was divided into 100 levels, with 0 apparently being an actual value. According to the book someone who could lift and carry approximately 50kg pr kilograms had 0 strength which left Raif a little miffed because he couldn't lift too much more than that and actually carry if for any real distance. Although he had been trained to use metric distances with the Army, he was still used to thinking of weights with the Imperial system and preferred pounds. Apparently that wasn't the case here and he was going to have to get used to thinking in the metric system completely so although he had already done the mental math and converted 50kg to 110lbs or pounds, he decided to stop before doing any more conversions and just start thinking in metric. He supposed it did make sense, after all the Imperial system didn't have any logic to it, but anyone who had grown up with it didn't want to change. Sighing at yet another thing he would have to adapt to he continued reading.

The interesting thing about how strength seemed to work was every 10 levels the individuals strength seemed to double, so if someone with 0 strength could lift approximately 50kg then someone with 9 strength could effectively lift as much as 100kg. Anyone back home who could lift and carry 100kg was either or collegiate athlete or in extremely good shape, not quite crossing into what he thought of as muscle head territory but still extremely strong. What seemed unbelievable to Raif was how it continued after that. At 19 strength instead of increasing to 150kg it went straight up to 200kg, and at 29 strength it was a whopping 400kg. As far as he knew the strongest man in the world might be able to dead lift, squat, or bench press 400kg but they definitely couldn't carry it for far and that was only at 29 strength. The book indicated that this trend continued until 99 where an individual would supposedly be capable of lifting and carrying 51,200kg which was an astronomical amount of weight. Trying to put it into perspective he know that an M1 Abrams Tank was supposed to weigh somewhere around 60MT or metric tons which were 1,000kg each. That meant someone with 99 strength could damn near pick up and carry one of the heaviest Tanks in the world... To make it even crazier while reaching 99 in a skill or attribute made you a master, true mastery was manageable after what the book mysteriously referred to as a “trial” and would grant you level 100 in that skill or attribute if you passed.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

Allowing himself to daydream for a moment he thought about what it must be like to be that strong. He would be able to grab a tree and rip it from the ground, roots and all with just his bare hands, to hold his car up without a jack if he needed to change the tire, or many other feats of strength existing only in legends like the stories of Hercules and Samson. On the other hand he had to wonder about the negative repercussions of such overwhelming strength. Would your muscles be so large they impeded movement, would you be able to control your strength enough to carry out daily tasks without accidentally breaking everything around you, or worse would you accidentally hurt people around you with just a careless movement? He shuddered to think of gaining an enormous amount of personal strength here before returning home only to return as one of the world's most eligible bachelors and still not managing to lose his virginity because he was TOO strong and couldn't have sex for fear of hurting the girl... Typical, he was doomed to be a virgin forever at the rate he was going. Hell the most action he'd gotten in the past two months was having John throw some clothes at him and tell him to get dressed...

Then again, thinking of John in a NON-sexual light he certainly hadn't appeared scrawny, but he didn't look like a muscle head either and he had moved so incredibly fast Raif was certain he must have a high strength as well as agility. Perhaps the attributes worked together after a certain point, with dexterity and agility helping to balance strength, dexterity and perception balancing agility, etc. It didn't say anything about the issue that he could see in the book, but that wasn't particularly surprising since it seemed to be a general overview book for beginners.

Another fascinating topic was agility which at level 0 meant someone was capable of moving steadily at about 10 kilometers an hour. Again he had to do the conversion so he could wrap his head around it a little better, even though the Army used meters and kilometers for tactical purposes he still used miles when determining speed. He know there were 400 meters on a standard football track, and four laps was approximately one mile. So that meant one mile was 1.6km and therefore 10kmph was approximately 6.25mph. It seemed to scale similarly to strength which was nice, meaning at 9 agility he would be able to move at 20kmph with relative ease and it would go all the way up to over 8,000kmph at level 99 and over 15,000kmph at level 100... With the perimeter of the Earth's equator being approximately 40,000 kilometers that meant he would be able to run around the world in less than three hours assuming he could somehow run across water... Damn that was some Dragon Ball Z level shit right there! There was a small note about constitution being required to have enough stamina to maintain bursts of speed for any considerable amount of time, but who cares he wanted to have all those primary attributes as high as possible anyway.

Reminding him of what John had said the book continued on that while an individual could build their strength through training as Raif had known people to do traditionally, it was impossible to level in this fashion. In this world, true strength was only obtainable by absorbing the energy of the world. Apparently all living beings possessed this energy and a small portion of it could be absorbed by an individual upon the death of their opponent. This energy would be absorbed into the skills that had been used during the fight, so for example if someone were to snipe their opponent from behind cover they would only gain a small amount of energy for strength, instead most of the energy would go to their dexterity. There was also a small foot note that any attempts to attack another sentient being outside of designated areas would result in severe penalties. Raif wasn't sure if he was willing to gamble his safety on possible penalties incurred by others, however he definitely intended to follow up on it.

Continuing on he quickly cataloged all the key points from the book as he went through it. Apparently there were a total of 16 different stats that an individual could pursue, with many ancillary activities enhanced by them. From what he could tell the skill Constitution was a measure of how tough you were, how quickly you recovered from injury, and how resistant you were to sickness and disease. Agility was another, that apparently affected how quickly you could move although there was a note cautioning against attempting to level this stat too much without also leveling your perception as well or you could eventually create an imbalance where you were moving faster than you could process causing a lack of control among other issues. Perception on the other hand had the same problem if approached from a different angle in that it could make your movements seem slower if you did not keep your agility roughly even. The good news was apparently having a high agility and perception would allow someone to move at mind boggling speeds when needed. Finally Dexterity seemed to affect accuracy and coordination. While he had been hoping for a little more detail about possible pitfalls so he could plan out his growth he was glad the book had that much. Raif got lost for a moment again thinking about what all the possibilities could be if he were to get all of these stats to a high enough level, possibly making him like Neo in the Matrix, or Superman in the comics albeit without the ability to fly.

Next were the skill based stats including everything he could think of such as mining, smithing, woodcutting, cooking, crafting, stealth, survival, farming, herblore, alchemy, and construction. Each of these seemed to be more than they seemed on the outside and heavily reliant on the personal stats for advancement. Smithing for example began to require a high dexterity, strength, vitality, and perception as it advanced in order to be able to withstand the high temperatures some of the higher tier metals required for working the metal, utilize the power it would require to forge the metal, the perception to tell where and when to strike, the dexterity to be able to do so. The odd thing about these skill based stats is they generated world energy that allowed advancement in their stats as well, but it would not affect primary attributes even though they were required to complete the more advanced projects. Instead the energy was generated from completing a project based on the quality of the workmanship and only affected the primary skill of the project.

Each of these skills seemed to have their own set of requirements and he knew he would need to take the time to create a solid plan for how to grow efficiently rather than just blindly going after each stat as he wanted. The problem was that with all the potential planning variables he already knew about it would take him hours to figure it all out, and he also needed to make sure he was able to learn as much as possible about each of these skills before he ran out of time. 100 days sounded like a lot of time, but with everything he knew he would need to learn it didn't feel like nearly enough. Just as he decided he would see these tutors before trying to do any more planning he heard footsteps approaching and looked up to see what looked like a young Asian Man approaching dressed in what he thought was a somewhat wrinkled Uniform of the People's Republic of China.