Tilly felt something digging into his back. He groaned and rolled over, groggily coming to his senses. He was in some sort of forest. He looked down at the rock-strewn dark soil and realized he had been lying on one of the plentiful small half-buried rocks that filled the areas between sparse shrubs and tall trees. He stared down at the ground, taking some time to reconcile the radical turn his life had just taken.
Everything he knew was gone. The life he had lived and the choices he had made were gone. Now he was in some sort of new world that was at least in part governed by a system that somehow managed and defined all of the legends and dreams of mankind.
It was a lot to take in. A burgeoning panic started to well up in his psyche in a delayed reaction to his recent radical shift in existence. He tamped it down in frustration and did what he always did with an overwhelming problem, he broke it down one piece at a time. He couldn't do anything about the vast majority of his circumstances. So start small.
Where had he been sent?
Tilly lifted his head from his downward musings and took in his surroundings. Aside from the dark soil, he found a forest not that different from any temperate climate on earth. While the flora wasn't exactly identifiable, it was at least familiar. He got up from his knees and found himself facing up a slope in a small clearing surrounded by foliage.
He heard crickets chirping, and a bird in the distance and started to relax a little. He still seemed to have the body of a man moderately fit in his 40s. He had never slacked when it came to staying fit for the job, but a lifetime of gaming and alcohol with a moderate amount of exercise hadn’t exactly made him a male model. None of that stood out to him nearly as much as what he was wearing.
“UGH, this is not at all what I was shown!” He choked out in frustration.
Instead of the well-stitched quality padded leather outfit and twin hatchets, he had seen on the figure, he was wearing a rough stitched animal skin coat with stiff matching pants. The pants seemed to be held up with some leather thong suspenders over his shoulders and had two loops built into the waist that held two stone-headed hatchets. Moccasins that could have been made by a child hung loosely around his feet and to top it all off, he felt absolutely no undergarments between him and the scratchy material.
“Chafing is going to be a nightmare.” He muttered darkly as he scowled down at his starter gear.
Congratulations! You have learned the skill, Identify. You can intuit basic facts about the things and people in the world around you.
“What the--” Tilly started, while flinching back at the glowing screen that popped into view with the sound of fanfare. He swiped at the screen and it disappeared from view before quickly being replaced by others.
You have identified Origin’s primitive leather armor: +10% to Endurance
You have identified Origin’s primitive stone hatchets: +10% to Dexterity.
Caution! This is a Legendary Soul Bound set of equipment, and cannot be discarded or replaced.
Tilly again swiped at the front of his face as if trying to get rid of an annoying insect.
“How do I get these to stop exploding in my face!” He yelped desperately, a life of endless phone notifications rearing its menacing head in his already bruised psyche.
System messages are set to silent. All new updates will be cached behind an update icon.
The boxes stopped appearing and instead, he found a blinking icon flashing at the top right of his peripheral vision. He tried to focus on it to see what the icon was and instead, a new screen popped up in his field of view.
Transference complete.
Status debuff Unconscious removed.
.005% of health damage taken by small forest rock
Congratulations! You have learned the skill, Identify. You can intuit basic facts about the things and people in the world around you.
You have identified primitive leather armor: +10% to Endurance.
You have identified primitive stone hatchets: +10% to Dexterity.
Caution! This is a Legendary Soul Bound set of equipment, and cannot be discarded or replaced.
Tilly absently thought about swiping away the screen, and it minimized on its own.
"That's a relief, I don't think I could have survived here for 5 minutes with those things popping up all… wait a second, ‘Legendary Soul Bound?'” Tilly looked down at his gear incredulously.
“You have got to be kidding me!” He griped, holding up one sleeve of his jacket for closer inspection. It seemed to be an amalgamation of several different patches of animal fur stitched together. But something seemed off with the fur, it went in and out of focus when he tried to look at the individual hairs on the animal skin patches.
Then the blurring snapped into clarity and Tilly saw minute glowing symbols crawling over and between the sewn-together animal skins.
“Huh,” he said, seeing his gear in a new light. Then the icon started blinking again, and he focused on it curiously.
identify level up! level 1
identify level up! level 2…
identify level up! level 15.
Congratulations! By taking time to analyze a Legendary set of gear you have greatly advanced your skill! Study new and interesting things to level up this skill even further.
“Oooh, that's more like it!”
An idea struck him, and he reached down towards one of his hatchets and tugged it free from its loop. Before he could pull it up to his face to try to study it, he heard a rustling from a nearby bush.
Tilly’s grip on his weapon tightened and he crouched down suddenly alert. A bush about ten yards up rustled again and a creature that looked a lot like a desert hare with antlers hopped into view.
“It can't be… is that a-” Tilly whispered, bringing up his once again flashing notification log.
You have identified a level 2 Juvenile Jakalope!
At first, the Jakalope just sniffed at the air, looking in a different direction and Tilly slowly took a step back, before snapping a twig under his foot and cursing softly. The Jakalope’s head whipped around and focused on Tilly.
It was then that Tilly saw the blackened veiny pattern fanning out from the creature's mouth into its eyes and antlers. It looked like it had caught a serious bug, like 'zombie apocalypse serious', and did not look friendly.
“Nice bunny…” Tilly said lamely gesturing the universal calm-down motion with his hands, and trying to pretend that he wasn't holding a weapon.
“Ggrrruuuggg” The creature gurgled in reply, a frothy black substance foaming at the corners of its mouth as its bloodshot eyes quivered in its sockets.
Tilly slowly tried to take another step back, his hands upright, palms out. The Jackalope took in his posture and then snapped forward in a springing charge. Its head tilted down with its antlers thrust forward.
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Tilly tried to swing his hatchet in some sort of defensive block and failed miserably as the sharpened tips of the antlers pierced his forearm and bicep in several places.
“ARRGGG” Several points of pain bloomed on his blocking arm, but Tilly was no stranger to pain and the need for quick decision-making in the face of danger.
The thing shook its head back and forth trying to free itself for another attack, but Tilly took the opportunity it had presented by getting lodged in his arm to hook his leg around the dog-sized creature. He locked it in place and grabbed his hatchet from his pinned arm before bringing it down furiously on the creature's neck.
The creature gurgled again and redoubled its effort to get free even as Tilly brought the hatchet down over and over, turning its neck into a bloody mess. With a final jerking motion, the Jackalope stopped moving.
“Holy Crap… that sucked.” Tilly gasped as he looked down at the corpse of the creature he held to the ground with his leg even as it still pinned his arm in place on its antlers. Its dark red blood had stained the whole front of his patchwork leather gear and his arm was on fire with the pain of being shallowly impaled in several places.
“Ok, just rip off a band-aid…” He muttered to himself and then before he could think about it more, he yanked his arm free from the antlers.
“JESUS CHRIST!” He yelled before collapsing to the ground gasping as he attempted to distract himself from the pain.
He should have gone for the “Cook" class... Tilly was willing to bet that guy wouldn't have had antler bunnies trying to stab him as soon as he woke up in a new world. And what was with that black stuff going on around the bunny’s mouth and under its eyes?
He tried to ignore the blinking icon at the edge of his vision and pulled his arm out of his jacket gingerly to look at the stab wounds. They were painful, but not very deep. The two on his forearm were barely bleeding, while the one on his bicep was releasing a small trickle. The bleeding would resolve on its own with pressure, but what he was most concerned with was infection.
'Wait, did infection even happen in this world? How did the health system even work?' He forcibly took his mind out of EMT mode and looked up at the blinking icon, sending it a mental command.
You are now in combat.
You suffer 5% damage from a piercing attack. You are partially restrained. You cannot move your right arm.
You have successfully pinned a Juvenile Jakalope, it is Fully Restrained.
You suffer 1% damage from a Continuing Pierce attack.
You attack the Juvenile Jakalope for 25% of its health. Bonus x2 damage from striking a critical area. You have inflicted Major Bleeding on your opponent, they will suffer 5% damage per second until resolved.
You attack the Juvenile Jakalope for 25% of its health. Bonus x2 damage from striking a critical area.
Juvenile Jakalope is defeated, you have now exited combat.
Congratulations! You have defeated your first creature with a martial weapon. You have learned the skill, Beginner Hatchet.
Beginner Hatchet level up! Adjusting for previous experience…
Beginner Hatchet level 1
Beginner Hatchet level 2…
Beginner Hatchet level 9
You have earned 200 exp
Congratulations! You are now level 2. 500 exp until the next level.
You have earned 5 stat points to distribute plus 2 points in Endurance and 1 in Dexterity from the class Son of Flame.
Even after the traumatic encounter he just had with the horned bunny from hell, Tilly was excited to see that some of his experience from his previous life would be quantified by this world.
Suddenly, a full career of shoving his personal ax into his belt before every fire call didn't seem so pointless, no matter how many times he got written up for improper PPE.
“Take that Captain Burnard!” He growled in triumph at the memory of his many pointless write-ups. He squinted at that last line of his notifications, trying to ground himself in what was most important about this world first.
'Ok, What am I learning here? There are stats issued to me at every level, and health is measured in percentage points instead of some arbitrary numeric… is there some sort of status screen I can-'
As soon as he thought to look for one, it popped up in front of him like a glaring beacon of numeric certainty.
Jonathan Luke Tillman
Level: 2 (500 experience to next level)
Display Name: Tilly
Race: Human
Class: Son of Flame
Titles: [Harbinger]
Stats:
Health: 93.945% (+.8% per minute)
Mana: 100% (+.7% per minute)
Constitution: 8
Endurance: 12(13.2)
Dexterity: 8(8.8)
Strength: 9
Wisdom: 7
Intelligence: 5
Abilities:
N/A
Skills:
-Identify level 15
-Beginner Hatchet level 9
Equipment:
-Origin’s primitive stone hatchets: +10% to Dexterity. (Legendary, growth type)
-Origin’s primitive leather armor set: +10% to Endurance. (Legendary, growth type)
Everything more or less made sense to Tilly from his previous experience in gaming. He had a level that increased any time he gained enough Experience. His skills could also level with use, Identify had gone crazy high the moment he tried to puzzle out his gear, which was one thing he had going for him.
He looked down at his patchwork leather and fur pants and shrugged. Legendary sounded pretty good, even though he had nothing to compare it to at the moment. He did love the wording, “Growth type.” If he understood that right then for better or worse he would never need another set of gear. No abilities though... all the other classes had come with abilities. Maybe it was a trade-off for starting with legendary gear. The one thing he completely didn't understand was the Title. What was a [Harbinger]?
Almost in reply to his question, another screen popped up.
[Harbinger]
One touched by Origin to bring about change, “None may interfere.” This and all other Origin-related titles, abilities, and items will be changed and seen as unremarkable by any deity or deity-aligned faction.
'Huh, there is that Origin guy again, I guess he is like God with a big “G” but seems to have some sort of non-interference thing going… well kinda, or else I wouldn't be here with some strange class with zero explanation. Speaking of explanations-'
“Can I get details on stat breakdowns or how health is calculated?” Tilly asked in the open air.
Nothing.
“Well, any explanation on my class?”
The annoying 'pop in your face any time you had a thought' system was again, completely silent.
“Well isn't that great!” Tilly snarked while taking his hand off his wound. Insanely, it had already stopped bleeding. He quickly checked the other two and saw that they had already scabbed over.
“Ok, well can I at least have my health and mana show above my line of sight?”
Instantly his configuration changed and he had his health and mana showing at the top of his vision opposite the notification Icon.
Health: 96%
Mana: 100%
“Now we are talking. Well while we are at it, show me any active status effects when they happen.” Tilly breathed out in exasperation. Nothing changed, but Tilly hoped that was because he didn't have any effects at the moment.
Then a thought struck him like lightning.
“Inventory!” He declared triumphantly.
Nothing.
Tilly’s dreams of an endless magic storage space were dashed. No carrying around tons of rocks that he could just drop from a high overlook and defeat his enemies. That also meant he couldn't just steal everything in sight and save it for a rainy day.
“I guess this is the hardcore, ‘bring camping equipment and rope or else’ kind of world.” He huffed, his shoulders dropping in disappointment. The motion brought his attention to his now completely clean gear. He examined the sleeve that had just been covered in blood and pierced through a few times. Nothing, completely restored to its previous state, which juxtaposed annoyingly with his arm which was still covered in a mixture of blood and dirt.
“Legendary huh? Well if you are going to do that magic clean-up thing, why don't you share the love?” he said as he rubbed off as much of the drying filth as possible in the dark loamy dirt.
“...grruugg” Tilly instantly froze, picking up a faint but now dreadfully familiar gurgle. His head snapped up and saw some movement behind a distant tree. He looped his hatchet and turned to flee, before looking back at the dead Jackalope with a grunt of frustration.
“I hope you aren't poisonous…” He growled as he hefted the surprisingly light creature over his shoulder and made his way as quickly and quietly as he could through the forest in the opposite direction of the noise.
He was all for leveling, but survival came first. It was time to go full man vs. wild.