Congratulations, Aurelian Lucis Imperius!
Hidden Conditions Met!
You have managed to defeat foes that should have torn you asunder!
Achievement: In Defiance of Fate
For successfully achieving what should be impossible, you have received the following:
3 x Health Potion
1 x Elixir
300 x Gold
Huge Experience Gain
Aurelian’s eyes widened at the new alert, and he looked around frantically after the message concluded. Already darkness was starting to creep into his vision, and he could see the last dregs of his health slipping away. Desperately he dropped his sword, opening his hands as if in prayer and holding them out ready to receive.
As if it were the signal the System had been waiting for, a small black pouch appeared in his hands and Aurelian quickly pulled it open. The moment his hands wrapped around one of the bottles of red liquid, he dropped the pouch heedlessly onto the remnants of the skeleton below, tore off the stopper in the bottle and tipped it back desperately.
The moment the liquid touched his palate his eyes widened.
It tasted like a chocolate milkshake.
The potion was gulped down as fast as he could swallow it, and when his eyes desperately sought his health bar, he collapsed onto his back in exhaustion. His health had exploded upward, from a barely-there 15 points to an already respectable 90, and it was still rising. He shuddered and groaned when he felt his skin knitting, and the foreign objects, dirt, and detritus littering his flesh being forced out while the magical liquid worked at sealing his wounds.
His status condition faded, and Aurelian felt tears in his eyes as he realised how close he’d come to death. Again.
And then he clenched his fists when he realised what he’d done.
He’d looked death in its ugly, acid-green gaze… and told it to fuck off.
A savage grin took hold of his features, and he started to laugh with an edge of hysteria. He didn’t care. He had survived. He had survived! An entire squad’s worth of skeletal bastards, and Aurelian had come out on the other side victorious. Alive.
More powerful.
Congratulations, Aurelian Lucis Imperius!
Hidden Condition Met!
You have fallen to less than 10% of your Health and managed to survive!
Achievement: Too Stubborn to Die
For successfully laughing in the face of your demise, you have received the following:
Title: Survivor
Moderate Experience Gain
+10 Points in Vitality
Aurelian read the achievement announcement with a feeling of exhausted, wry amusement. First the world tries to kill him viciously, and then the System rewards him for almost literally refusing to die. It was hardly his idea of funny, but it was certainly poetically deserved. His eyes trailed over the rewards, and then settled on the middle line. That was strange.
“I wonder if I lev—?”
A solemn gong reverberated through his mind and soul, and alert lit up his HUD.
Congratulations, Aurelian Lucis Imperius!
Through hard work and daring effort, you have beaten the odds and won your first round of life-or-death combat!
You have been granted a small amount of bon̷̳͗̀͝u̶̧͙͛s̵̬̖͓̃́̎ ̸͓͖̬̜͐̌̏̐E̷̛̙̦͕̊x̸̡̝̖̍̄p̷̛̳͓̈́̏e̸͔̘͌͐̿͊ŗ̵̗͚̠̎i̷̘͕͚̊ę̶̭̹̈́/̴͕̊/̴̛̝̥̎̒̿#̴̨̂̑̒̊ ̴̖̲̯̳͂̍ṫ̸̮͈͝ͅ[̶͔͉̃͜]̷̯̈́̓̌̌ ̶̞̻̥͋̏̉m̶̖̳̩̟͑̒̑;̴̢̞̗̽̀̅̕͜;̵̠̆$̶͓͍̓̎̉͜%̴̲̽̒̋͜ͅ ̶̝͙̈́t̴̰͌̓̓̈́t̸̢͔̯̹̊͛t̸̖̊͑̒͠t̴̨̝̞̜̀̈́̈́͂t̵͔̳̜͑̏́͘—̵͙̱͓̌̃̚̕!̴̻͇̓
ERROR
BLOODLINE DETECTED: ELYSEAN
TITLE DETECTED: RECLAIMER
ENEMIES MARKED AS CRITICAL FOE OF BLOODLINE
ENEMIES MARKED AS CRITICAL FOE OF TITLE HOLDER
EXPERIENCE GAINS WILL BE ADJUSTED
SYSTEM OVERRIDE IN PROGRESS
STANDBY
. . .
Congratulations, Aurelian Lucis Imperius!
Through hard work and daring effort, you have beaten the odds and won your first round of life or death combat! Due to the nature of your foes and their correlation to your own existence, this instance of battle has been elevated greatly in prominence!
You have been granted a massive amount of bonus Experience!
Fight on, Reclaimer!
Aurelian stared at the alert incredulously. “Why do I feel like this is going to su—AAAGGGGHHH!”
His words were cut off as a storm of energy obliterated all sense of reason or comprehension, and a deluge of power burned its way through his system and into his Calamity Core. Aurelian could do little more than spasm on the floor and drag his tortured fingers against the ground as an unending deluge of experience saturated him with enough euphoric bliss to transcend into targeted agony. His eyes rolled into the back of his head, and yet the power refused to let him lose consciousness.
Energy that crushed all reason additionally sustained his mind, and so Aurelian was trapped in a horrific feedback loop of forced awareness, and blazing agony, which his body logically deduced it needed to black him out to protect him from—and yet couldn’t. He felt his Pain Tolerance while he writhed, and he couldn’t have cared less about it.
Rapturous bliss seared him from the inside out, and he felt as if he were a dam fit to burst.
Just when he thought he could take no more, endure no more; his Core found room, and so still the agony persisted.
His body was sundered as if it were tearing itself apart, his muscles screaming and searing him as if they were bursting, slicing apart, and then repairing faster than he could comprehend. He felt like he’d somehow sunk more firmly against the stone, as if the energy were pushing him down, bloating him, thickening his form and increasing his weight under the sheer power of the forces wracking his body.
It felt like hours, like days, like entire years before the burning ocean of power finally started to wane—the System’s sluice gates sliding shut and offering him blessed relief from the deluge of energy saturating his unprepared body. When it was finally done, Aurelian lay panting for breath with sweat clinging to every inch of his body, his eyes wide and staring at the ceiling, and his hands curled into fists tight enough to puncture his own skin with his still-trimmed nails.
“That… Fucking… Sucked…” he said breathlessly.
The chime of new alerts almost made him jump in fear.
Pain Tolerance is now Level 20!
. . .
Pain Tolerance is now Level 22!
Iron Will is now Level 13!
. . .
Iron Will is now Level 16!
You have reached Level 3!
. .
You have reached Level 16!
Congratulations, Aurelian Lucis Imperius!
Through tribulation and strife, you have managed to ascend past your limits!
You have reached Novice Tier!
Hidden Conditions met!
You have defied all expectations and gained ten full levels within your first day in the Realms!
Achievement: Prodigy
For successfully defying all sense of reasonable growth, you have received the following:
Trait: Fast Learner (E)
100 x Gold
2 x Skill Evolution Point
1 x Epic Body Essence Draught
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
Minor Experience Gain
Aurelian braced himself for pain, and then blinked when none came. Instead, a warmth suffused his body, moving through his tortured nerves and leaving behind a sense of soothing relaxation in its wake. He felt both cooled down and pleasantly warm at the same time, and his eyes widened at the difference. If that was what a normal surge of experience was supposed to be, then he truly had received a staggeringly large amount in a very short span of time. His eyes scanned over what the achievement offered, and he settled first on the trait to pull up its information.
Name: Fast Learner
Type: Trait
Rarity: Epic
Description: Awarded to those that prove to be prodigious in some avenue of learning or personal growth.
Effects: +10% to All Skill Experience gains.
Next, he reviewed his Survivor title, curious as to what it had to offer.
Name: Survivor
Type: Title
Rarity: Rare
Description: Awarded to those that come to the brink of death and refuse to succumb to its embrace.
Effects: +1 Vitality per level and increases the efficacy of all health potions by 20%.
“Okay, that is awesome,” he said with an appreciative whistle as he read through both. With his mind whirling and curiosity now directed towards his progress with his new additions, he sat up a moment later with care; not wanting to put his already-tortured body through any more hardship if he could avoid it—warm-cool relaxed feeling or not. His eyes scanned the room, and he found his quarry quickly: a small wooden chest lying next to the bag he’d dropped in his haste to gulp down the healing potion.
Before he reached for it however, he realised something else about levelling up: Attributes. A grin stole across his features, and Aurelian quickly brought up his character sheet with a surge of excitement. With the alerts that rampaged through his mind, he knew several of his attributes had levelled, and his title, race, and origin all granted him bonuses too. He was eager to see what that looked like.
Name: Aurelian Lucis Imperius
Temper: Untempered Novice
Core: Calamity Core (Ignition Stage)
Level: 16 | Race: Elysean (L) | Origin: Nephilim (L) | Gender: Male | Zodiac: Dragon (L)
Health: 520 | Mana: 102 | Stamina: 115
STR: 52 | AGI: 16 | DEX: 20 | VIT: 52 | END: 21 | INT: 14 | PER: 11 | WIL: 60 | CHA: 22
Mind Skills: Revelate (E) 9 | Linguistics (UC) 1 | Philology (R) 3 | Exploration (UC) 3 | Investigation (UC) 4 | Iron Will (R) 16 | Tactician (R) 7
Body Skills: Pain Tolerance (UC) 22 | Longsword Mastery (C) 19 | Running (C) 12 | Dodge (C) 13 | Durable (UC) 12
No Spirit Skills
Traits: Fast Learner (E)
Titles: Elysean Reclaimer (U) | Survivor (R)
Languages: Common | Elysean | Draconic
28% to Level 17
You have 70 Attribute Points Available!
You have 15 Skill Points Available!
You have 3 Skill Evolution Points Available!
Aurelian stared at his character sheet in silence, his eyes dancing between each attribute and skill with a look of quiet wonder on his features. His strength, agility, dexterity, endurance, vitality, willpower, and charisma had all risen; but his strength, vitality, and willpower had gone up meteorically. It made him realise that perhaps the imagined pain of his muscles exploding and reassembling had not been fanciful.
Careful not to overdo it, he rose to his feet slowly and felt the change in his musculature in a way he hadn’t when sitting up. His legs immediately felt more powerful, and his arms seemed intrinsically enhanced to the point where he’d feel confident walking into any gym in his hometown. He also felt denser and more solid, as if he was just that much more immovable and resistant to damage. The change in his vitality was notable in that regard.
On a whim he looked down at his midriff and almost swore in surprise.
His stomach was massively reduced. Only a small bulge remained in its place, and when he placed his hand upon what had been several years of laziness and fast food, instead all he felt was somewhat pliable, taut flesh over a foundation of growing muscle. His eyes drifted from his stomach to his biceps and triceps properly, and Aurelian couldn’t help but reach up to feel himself as he flexed, raising his eyebrows in surprise.
He felt… good. Really good. At only level 16 he felt as if he could confidently take any Olympic boxer on Earth in a one on one and stand a solid chance of knocking them out cold. It was a surreal experience. So much growth, change, and power in such a relatively short amount of time was astounding. Sure, he’d almost died for it, but he could understand intimately in a way he never did before why people would pursue levels in the Realms.
If people from Earth ever found out that all the fictional bullshit they wrote about isekai was real, there’d be a global deluge of scientific effort to try to find a way to bridge a gap between… worlds? Universes? He shook his head before he could get distracted. That was an existential and tangential rabbit hole he did not want to go down in that moment.
Instead, he looked back at his character sheet, and down at his available points.
It seemed like a lot at first glance, especially the Attributes, until he really examined it. He had nine attributes to level, and only enough points for a full seven in all but one of them, which would instead receive six.
That seemed… ill-advised. What he needed was to balance his existing gains with something more… reasonable. The best way to go about that would be to focus on his other physical stats like agility and dexterity, and also on improving his intelligence attribute so he wasn’t… well, perhaps not stupid but certainly lagging behind the rest of his attributes.
He also couldn’t forget his other attribute, perception. Perception very likely controlled his situational awareness and ability to discern things at a distance and proximity, and with how his time in the Realms was shaping up, the attribute would be critical to his survival moving forward.
“No time like the present…” he said with a sigh as his eyes looked towards his sheet, and he set to distributing points.
First, he threw an immediate and massive 26 points into his intelligence to raise it to 40, and groaned at the sudden headache that started at the centre of his skull and radiated outward. Dizziness struck him and he fell to his knees, his equilibrium sending him almost onto the floor completely but for his arm catching the ground at the last second. The pain increased rapidly until it hit a crescendo, and then just as quickly started to ebb.
Aurelian reached up and wiped away a small amount of blood from his nose, grimacing as he did.
“Note to self: Do not dump points into your brain if you want to avoid haemorrhagic results.”
He froze a moment after he spoke. How did he know…?
Woah.
Everything seemed suddenly clearer, and more easily comprehended. It was hard to fully realise what it was he was feeling, other than to say it was elucidation on his circumstances and existence. The points in intelligence had made his mind sharper, and more erudite. He felt more capable, and better equipped to process information. Concepts that had seemed overwhelming or frightening now were… less so. The fear was still there, but instead it was mixed with excitement, or even a degree of eagerness.
To learn. To understand.
It felt good.
He was almost, almost tempted to dump the remainder of his points into intelligence as well—but it was that very increase he’d just had that warned him against it. Not only could it be dangerous for him to do so, but hyper-focusing on one aspect of himself would be… foolish. With his strength as high as it was, he needed to compensate for it. That meant, first of all, increasing his agility and dexterity.
Agility came first and he mentally slotted 14 points into it immediately, marvelling at how much easier it was to interface with the System after increasing his intelligence. It also meant that when the pain started, and he felt his tendons and joints changing and altering, he was already logically prepared for it. His Pain Tolerance flared, and he gritted his teeth against the feeling of itchy insides until it was done, and agility sat at a respectable 30 points.
After that was dexterity, and into that he poured a full 20 of his remaining points. The ability to maintain his hand-eye coordination alongside his increased strength would be crucial to maximising his combat efficiency, and he couldn’t afford to shirk that if he wanted a hope at surviving his predicament. He had only barely managed to kill the skeletons, and even with increased physical power there was no guarantee the next enemy he faced—and he would face another, he was sure—would be any easier to defeat.
The change to his dexterity was less noticeable than his agility, primarily because it didn’t alter the foundation of his structure as much as it added new layers of padding and made certain joints more responsive. It also increased his flexibility, which he felt as a subtle burning across his muscles, followed by a quantifiable change in the elasticity of them. The concept seemed strange, but he understood it nonetheless.
He knew that his ability to bend, shift, dodge, rotate, twist, and more besides would be enhanced. It was ideal for what he needed.
It would also make him a far more formidable swordsman, which the nerd in him loved.
With his last 10 points, Aurelian raised his perception without hesitation. He’d already qualified to himself why it was necessary, and even when his eyes started to burn and ache, and he had to reach up to hold his ears when his drums began to buzz, and nausea welled up inside of him from his momentarily damaged equilibrium; he held fast to the logic that had guided him to the decision.
It proved itself worthwhile when the proverbial reconstruction passed, and he looked upon the world with his new perception for the first time. Everything was just… clearer, and more defined. It felt like he’d gone up from standard definition to high definition. The world around him was crisper, the corners sharper, the colours more vibrant.
The low light conditions became more manageable, and he was able to make more efficient use of the limited light as well, not unlike a dog or cat. He even spotted new shades of colour he’d never noticed, and spied details—like the writing on the destroyed armour, and golden sunburst branded onto the faded white lamellar plate—he had previously been incapable of seeing; or perhaps had simply never had the capability to notice without intentionally searching for it.
Aurelian sighed in satisfaction at the changes and took a moment to revel in them.
He felt… renewed, emboldened, and better prepared to face his new reality. The flaws in his previous line of thinking were also more readily accessible to his improved intellect. It wasn’t as if he’d gone from layman to Stephen Hawking, but he had certainly graduated from B student to A+ honour roll. Had he possessed his current intelligence on Earth, he’d have easily gone for his PhD instead of settling for his Master’s.
“C’est la vie,” he said simply and pulled up his new character sheet.
Name: Aurelian Lucis Imperius
Temper: Untempered Novice
Core: Calamity Core (Ignition Stage)
Level: 16 | Race: Elysean (L) | Origin: Nephilim (L) | Gender: Male | Zodiac: Dragon (L)
Health: 520 | Mana: 180 | Stamina: 115
STR: 52 | AGI: 30 | DEX: 40 | VIT: 52 | END: 21 | INT: 40 | PER: 21 | WIL: 60 | CHA: 22
Mind Skills: Revelate (E) 9 | Linguistics (UC) 1 | Philology (R) 3 | Exploration (UC) 3 | Investigation (UC) 4 | Iron Will (R) 16 | Tactician (R) 7
Body Skills: Pain Tolerance (UC) 22 | Longsword Mastery (C) 19 | Running (C) 12 | Dodge (C) 13 | Durable (UC) 12
No Spirit Skills
Traits: Fast Learner (E)
Titles: Elysean Reclaimer (U) | Survivor (R)
Languages: Common | Elysean | Draconic
28% to Level 17
You have 15 Skill Points Available!
You have 3 Skill Evolution Points Available!
The skill points and skill evolution would need to wait.
He didn’t have the knowledge to make educated judgements on those. Despite his still-yearning desire to upgrade and evolve Longsword Mastery, especially now that he could do it theoretically three times; he needed to gather more information before he committed to a course of action. If he hadn’t improved his intelligence first, he realised, he might have just thrown caution to the wind… and that would have been a terrible mistake.
The meat of the concern of course was whether using the points held any penalties. Would it alter his progression? Slow his rate of understanding? It could result in a broken skill or a foundational error in how he actualised himself in combat or elsewhere, and those were risks that—absent appropriate insight—he couldn’t take a chance with. He’d seen too many stories go badly to simply run the gauntlet and hope for the best.
Relieved at his choices and content to let the remaining points lie, for the moment; he instead turned to the other pressing matter that demanded his attention, and let a sly grin creep across his features.
It was time to examine the loot.