Calling it a forest was overselling what it was. Not only was this knotweed not something people made furniture out of, but it wasn’t all that large, either. In late summer, the yearly stalks would reach maybe ten or twelve feet tall. Those stalks dried out when they died in the fall, leaving a mess of hollow, sharp sticks everywhere. The new growth hardly displaced the husks, making the whole thicket a tangle that was difficult to navigate. The dead knotweed stalks made perfect makeshift weapons to bash and break the stalks in my way. I tried several things to see what would net me experience and what wouldn’t.
The answer was disheartening. The majority of things didn’t yield any results. Swinging the sticks around, breaking them, making weapons, and plenty of other things. What did work were the simplest of actions.
Milestone: Crawled 1 step
Exp Gained: 1
Milestone: Crawled 10 steps
Exp Gained: 2
Milestone: Threw Object 1 time
Exp Gained: 1
Milestone: Jumped 10 times
Exp Gained: 2
Milestone: Walked 1,000 steps
Exp Gained: 8
Those actions alone brought my total to 27. They also revealed at least some of where I’d gained the 18 experience I’d had before I unlocked Notifications I. If my guess was right, that meant 7 of it had been from walking.
In trying to suss out what milestones there were, I stumbled on a few ways that I would need to unlock to get more experience.
Feature: Milestones II
Unlock Personal Use: 500 Exp
Unlock For Universal Use: 500,000 Exp
Feature: Milestones III
Unlock Personal Use: 2,500 Exp
Unlock For Universal Use: 2,500,000 Exp
Feature: Quests I
Unlock Personal Use: 100 Exp
Unlock For Universal Use: 100,000 Exp
Feature: Quests II
Prerequisite: Quests
Unlock Personal Use: 500 Exp
Unlock For Universal Use: 500,000 Exp
Feature: Quests III
Prerequisite: Quests II
Unlock Personal Use: 2,500 Exp
Unlock For Universal Use: 2,500,000 Exp
Milestones II opened up some of the more complicated actions like creating a weapon or constructing a building. Milestones III was all about the System and magic.
The Quests line was similar to the Milestones line, but instead of set objectives, these covered different sorts of missions and timeframes. I couldn’t get much information on them as my method—attempting something to get an error—didn’t lend itself well to figuring out the boundaries of each feature.
All of this exploration led back to one fact. I needed the System Help function desperately. I was also going to need all of the features I’d discovered so that I could gather enough experience for whatever I’d need to un-fuck the world.
I spent another hour messing around in the knotweed before I felt the pangs of hunger and decided to return to the house for lunch. I’d managed to gather another 18 experience, bringing my total to 45.
Dad was in the kitchen when I climbed the stairs and entered the house through the back door.
“Hey Dad,” I said. “What’s for lunch?”
“Hey kid,” he replied. “Ham and cheese or PB and J?”
“I guess I’ll have a ham and cheese,” I decided.
“Coming right up!”
I chuckled and thanked him. While he busied himself gathering the sandwich ingredients, I stepped onto a stool to get some height and grab a plastic cup from one of the cabinets. I slid the stool over so I could fill my cup with cold water from the sink. When I was done, I carefully carried the cup to the table in the hallway to await my food.
Dad plopped the plate in front of me a couple minutes later and sat down with me. I tore into my meal with only the intensity a child could have. I was able to finish half the sandwich and all of the water quickly enough to cause his eyebrow to raise.
“Thanks for the sandwich,” I said. He nodded. “Could I have some paper and a pen or pencil?”
“Sure. You can grab what you need, they’re in—right. You wouldn’t remember where that is. Let me get them for you.”
“Thanks. Sorry to bother you.”
“Not to worry, kiddo. Your mental age being older makes my job easier, even if it’s going to lead to some awkwardness now and then.”
I nodded as he walked away. Physical things had worked for milestones, so I wondered if mental tasks would work the same way. Even if not, the paper would be useful to sketch out my thoughts and figure out what I should work towards. I took my plate into the kitchen and refilled my cup with water. When I was done, Dad had placed the paper and pencil where I’d been sitting.
I climbed onto my chair and picked up the pencil. It felt large and relatively heavy in my small hands. I didn’t have the dexterity nor the strength I was used to, so being neat was difficult. Despite my struggles with fine motor control, I started to make a table outlining what I’d unlocked and what I knew of that could be unlocked. The first word I wrote yielded a notification chime.
Milestone: Wrote 1 word
Exp Gained: 1
As I continued through the exercise, I picked up another 2 experience from the 10 word milestone. I decided to mark the most important ones to work towards given what I had figured out. It’d probably change once I got access to more information from the System Help function, but thinking through it all using paper and pencil allowed me to reconcile my ideas with each other.
Feature Personal Cost (Exp) Universal Cost (Exp) Priority Status Screen Manipulation 1 1,000 eventually System Help 100 100,000 1 Notifications II 50 50,000 eventually Milestones II 500 500,000 3 Milestones III 2,500 2,500,000 5 Quests I 100 100,000 2 Quests II 500 500,000 4 Quests III 2,500 2,500,000 6
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
I decided that I valued getting access to more sources of experience above anything else besides information. I worried that it would be difficult to get enough to secure those new sources. The chimes were annoying, yes, but I’d much rather save the experience for the vastly more important things. I used the back of the same piece of paper to make a table of all the milestones I’d achieved. I made a guess about how many unknowns there were and how much I’d gained from them.
Milestone Name Last Milestone Achieved Total Experience Running 1,000 15 Walking 1,000 15 Jumping 100 7 Crawling 100 7 Throwing 10 3 Writing 10 3 Unknown 1 100 7 Unknown 2 100 7 Unknown 3 1 1 Unknown 4 1 1 Total Experience 66 Spent Experience 10 Current Experience 56
I compared what I knew to what the numbers the screens were telling me was the truth and back-calculated what I assumed the most likely scenario to be. I’d tried to get the System to do it for me, but that was another feature I’d need to buy called Logging II. I figured I could keep a running list myself and save the experience of buying two levels of Logging just to get a table I could make myself. There might be other things the log would capture, but I decided to remain ignorant of them for the moment.
Figuring out the experience table revealed one of the unknowns.
Milestone: Calculated 10 numbers
Exp Gained: 2
That left three more to look out for. Unless I was wrong, then it could be five or even more than that.
With my primary thoughts organized, I tried drawing several pictures to see if that was one of the milestones. That didn’t work, and an error message referencing Milestones II told me all I needed to know. Several other tests—like making paper airplanes—gave similar results.
I shelved the mental project for a later time to go up to my room and rest for an hour or two. As much as I remembered hating naps when I was younger, I could feel my body craving a short rest.
“Hey, Dad,” I called out, “I’m going to take a nap.”
“Ok,” I heard his voice answer from somewhere upstairs.
I shrugged and gathered the tables I’d made and brought them with me to store in my room. Leaving them about was sure to raise questions I couldn’t answer yet. Best to be at least a little discreet. I placed them on the bookshelf inside one of the books and laid down on my bed. Sleep was quick to claim my tired eyes.
A notification chime woke me sometime later. I groaned and cursed. Maybe that upgrade should move up the list in priority a bit if my sleep was going to be interrupted by notifications. I shook my head and read the screen. Immediately, a second notification chimed.
Milestone: Slept 1 hour
Exp Gained: 1
Milestone: Read 1,000 words
Exp Gained: 8
It took me a moment to gather my thoughts. A steady stream of experience from sleeping wasn’t bad, but there was a definite limit to what I’d be able to get from that—really not much if my mental math was correct. That was going to be the case for pretty much all of the milestones I’d discovered. Reading looked to be the best of the bunch, but all of them would contribute at least some.
I stretched and headed back downstairs. I checked the clock by the front door—a humorous upside-down Australian clock—and saw that I had about 2 more hours before dinner. With that time, I decided to spend it as I had in the morning. I let Dad know I was going to the back yard and exited the back door.
My mostly-refreshing nap had given my mind time to think without my consciousness getting in the way. It had, in my absence, come up with a few more things it thought were good ideas to try that might be milestones. The first was skipping. If walking, crawling, and running counted, maybe other forms of motion would as well.
It worked! As did push-ups, sit-ups, and squats. Pull-ups worked as well, but I broke the only branch low enough after doing one. I’d need to find another option if I were going to do more. I counted my blessings that my small body was filled to the brim with energy. Normally, I’d have been sore all over doing a fraction of what I was asking my body to do.
When I was too tired to continue, I went back inside and up to my room. When I crested the last step and set foot on the second floor, a notification chime rang out that solved yet one more of the mystery milestones.
I decided that instead of reading right away, I would update the milestone chart and add a column with the maximum I could expect from each category. I worried that if I picked up the System Help function, I’d lose the ability to gain enough experience to do anything else. Ten minutes of effort later, I looked over my work.
Milestone Name Last Milestone Achieved Total Experience Estimated Maximum Experience Running 1,000 15 255 Walking 1,000 15 255 Jumping 100 7 63 Crawling 100 7 31 Throwing 10 3 31 Writing 10 3 255 Arithmetic 100 7 31 Reading 1000 15 511 Sleeping 1 1 15 Climbing 10 3 31 Push-ups 100 7 63 Sit-ups 100 7 63 Squats 100 7 63 Skipping 100 7 127 Pull-Ups 1 1 63 Unknown 1 100 7 ??? Total Experience 120 1,857 Spent Experience 10 10 Current Experience 110 1,847
I sat and looked at the paper in front of me. I felt dread wash over me. Even if I found several more milestones, it was going to take forever to have enough to do anything. The experience was primarily front-loaded, and I only had so long to do whatever it is I had to do. Without the help function, figuring out what I should do was nearly impossible. Getting the System Help function and then unlocking another way to get experience was also nearly impossible. Despite my initial reluctance to get the notifications feature, it had given me this crucial information.
Maybe there’s another way?