The weather was pleasant, and the grass crunched beneath my feet. From time to time a cool breeze would blow and I would think to myself,

‘This world is at war?’

It just seemed so impossible to have such a beautiful place in a world that was apparently engaged in war.

But maybe it was the exhaustion still remaining in my body, because I didn’t want to think at all. Where before, I would’ve mulled over what Claira said and what its implications were, I figured I would cross that bridge when it came to it.

For now, I just wanted to experiment with my System and find this village.

Maybe a map would be useful for my next component… No, even with a map I’d have to visit a place anyway. It wouldn’t help me know places I haven’t been to.

Maybe a fast travel system with a map? That would be useful. And maybe in combat I can fast travel to the sky, drop someone, and fast travel back to the ground.

Never mind, that just sounded like teleportation with extra steps. Speaking of teleportation, I wonder if I could teleport. All the skills I’d been making lately have been pretty mundane. They only increased my jump height, made me climb walls (I don’t know if that was mundane at all, my skin literally stuck to the stone like glue) or made me bleed out slower.

Blind trial-and-error would take ages, and it was much better to find out a rule or pattern to the kind of skills I was allowed now. That would make creation of future skills faster as well.

Just imagine if I couldn’t create a skill in time and my head gets blown off…

I hope I didn’t jinx it by thinking of that. Oh well.

I opened up my skill menu and pondered the empty skill slots in front of me as I walked.

Ok, so far all my skills have been physical enhancements/augmentations. Let’s try taking it to the extreme and see how the skill creator works for edge cases.

So I mentally outlined the description of a skill that would allow me to have the strength required to lift a truck with a single hand.

[Skill: Minor Strength increase

Description: Increase your strength by 30%]

My current strength stat was a pitiful 9, and with a 30% improvement, it was now… I checked my stat screen quickly.

Strength: 11 (Base stat->9. Increase from Skill: Minor Strength increase)

11… It was better than 9 but what 11 strength actually mean?

I deleted the skill and looked around for something I could lift in these sparsely wooded grassy plain. Fortunately there was a tree some distance away that looked like it belonged in the savannahs of Africa. I walked over to it, expecting some sticks nearby.

Lucky me.

There was a branch as thick as my arm resting on the dirt. I grabbed one of them and tried snapping it in half.

My arms trembled as I poured every ounce of effort into snapping this branch. It bent a little, but failed to give.

Defeated, I threw it to the ground and re-made the skill.

Now I picked up the branch and grimaced as I tried to snap it. Even when I held it from both ends and applied all the force I could muster, all I could do was bend it ever so slightly.

“Fuck!” I flung the branch and it hit the tree with a thunk.

“What a shitty skill…”

Needless to say, I immediately deleted that useless skill.

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And as for the rest of my stats… I didn’t even bother trying to make a skill to test their limits. The effects were probably going to be minor with my low stats… But after a moment’s hesitation, I tried it anyway, just to confirm my guess. My stats could get a maximum of 30% better, but not more than that.

Wait… I vaguely remembered creating a skill to kick harder when trying to escape the hall. But I didn’t remember any percentage increase.

I tried recreating that skill although I didn’t have much to go off of. As I recall, it was just a skill to kick harder.

A translucent blue panel appeared in front of me, notifying me of my new skill:

[Skill: Horse’s kick

Description: Kick twice as hard with half the energy cost]

So it seems improvements like this were also possible. I wondered how far I could take this kind of skill, so I tried making a skill that could increase my strength while also decreasing my energy usage.

But it failed and all I was left with was the increase in strength. Why did the kick get two effects while the stat increase only had one? Maybe it was the case that the more specific I made the affected body part, the better I could make that skill. ‘Twice as hard’ meant a 100% increase after all!

And going further than that, maybe the more restrictions and conditions I added, the more powerful I could make a skill under certain conditions.

An excited smile grew across my face as I sat down under the tree.

This time, I tried to make a kicking skill that broke the limits of humanity. It was going to be hilarious to see someone with my skinny frame punch with the force of a train.

So I specified what I wanted:

A kick that was 10, no, 50 times as hard.

I looked around, trying to find conditions to restrict my skill that I could immediately fulfill. And I laughed with how many arbitrarily stupid conditions I could find. Today I was going to break this System I’d received as much as possible!

But only when I am standing in grass, and holding a large stick. Additionally, the weather should be pleasant, it should be sunny, I should be wearing only a single shoe, I needed to have a clump of dirt in my pockets and I should be closing one eye for the skill to activate.

A translucent blue panel popped up in front of me, and my smile slowly faded.

[Skill: Conditional one-kick man

Description: Punch 6 times as hard but only when standing in grass during daytime while holding a stick in pleasant weather with a single closed eye and a clump of dirt in your pockets]

The restrictions did work. Just not as much as I expected. I tested these same restrictions on my strength increase skill and found that it increased from 30% to 60%. Amazing results actually. I would have to test out which conditions gave the most improvements sometime later, because when I looked up at the sun, it was already in the West.

“I don’t have that much time.” I murmured. I wanted to see the village before sunset so I could make it back in time. Quickly standing up and dusting my pants, I resumed my journey to the east.

Along the way, I tried making skills that could actually be considered superpowers, like elemental manipulation, constructs, transformations and such. But all of them resulted in the same skill that I couldn't use.

[Skill: ???

Description: ???]

I didn’t feel different, and I even tried creating a skill to enable me to use these unnamed skills. You can guess how that went.

So as I walked dejectedly, I mulled over how this all-powerful System I’d received was really only good for augmenting my physical attributes.

And just when I remembered the time I climbed the walls of the statue by sticking to them, I saw a rabbit.

“A rabbit?”

Yes, a rabbit. It had a brownish-white coat and had two extra legs that flopped limply as it hopped towards me rather excitedly.

“Awww, come here.”

Whether it had two, four or six legs, I was a sucker for cute things. And the thing hopping in front of me was just adorable. I bent down to pet it.

It ducked and aimed for my legs.

Before I could even react, my jaw dropped in shock, because the cute little rabbit— was furiously humping my knee.

I couldn’t help myself and burst out laughing. I picked it up by the scruff of its neck and gently set it aside. But once again, it ran to my legs and furiously began humping it.

With an amused smile on my face, I ignored the rabbit and continued to walk— making sure I stepped carefully. While it chased me from behind, I felt my foot bump into something soft and looked down.

There was another rabbit furiously humping my foot.

I felt something on the side of my left foot and saw another rabbit doing the same.

“What the—”

As if crawling out the woodwork, a whole horde of rabbits oozed from the Earth, all of them rushing towards me. And as I gazed in confusion, I noticed that some of the rabbits were furiously entangled together in a lump of bodies, rolling around.

I saw streaks of blood in some of the rabbits, and all of a sudden I felt a sting in my shins.

“Ow!”

I lifted my foot, only to have the empty space immediately filled with rabbits. As my confusion disappeared, horror set in and I furiously shook off some rabbits that began to crawl up my leg.

“What the hell is happening?”