Matt looked over his system again and saw that he had received 1 skill point from the “survive” quest. He had a few guesses as to what it did, but if he was right, it was a really nice reward.
‘It should somehow boost a skill right?’
He was tempted to just instantly use it on one, but he wanted more info first. Instead of asking [Help] there had been something he wanted to try for a while, but it always slipped his mind.
‘I’ve scanned objects with my inspect, but I was wondering if it works on system features too?’
It didn’t seem unreasonable for that to be the case. He also felt now that his inspect skill was level 2, he could get more useful information about it than before, so he used his inspection skill while visualizing the skill point.
It seemed to have worked as the info for the skill point appeared in front of him.
__________
[Skill Point]
Count: 1
A unit of measurement for points used to level up skills. When a skill point is used on a skill, it will increase by one whole level.
__________
‘It worked! Also, increasing a skill by a whole level.’
His guess from earlier seemed correct. He could use the skill point to level up one of his skills. He looked over all of his skills and started to wonder which one he should level up.
He remembered he had just gotten new skills as well, but they were both level 1. Earlier, he couldn’t increase a skill past level 2, so he thought that’s where the skill point could be the most useful.
After browsing his current skills, he felt like the most useful ones were probably either mind palace or storage. He was curious to see what a level 2 mind palace would be like, but when it came to practicality, his storage skill was fairly useless right now.
‘I feel like storage has a huge potential as a skill.’
In the end, he decided to save the skill point for storage. He also knew that this wasn’t the only time he would ever get a skill point, especially if he completed more difficult quests often.
Once storage reached level 2, he would use the skill point on it to get it to level 3. Now the only issue was increasing it to level 2.
‘Oh, well, I’ll think about that tomorrow.’
There was something he had been wanting to try. The other large reward he had gotten was two new skills after he leveled up to level 4. Many of the system skills he had gotten so far were very useful, so he was brimming with excitement to check them out.
The two skills he had gotten were Message and Crafting.
‘Let’s try message first.’
He activated the skill and a new menu opened in front of him.
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__________
User: #23563
[Inbox]
[Friends]
[Party]
__________
‘Oh, it really is straight from a game.’
But there was a number that concerned him a bit, his user ID was in the tens of thousands…
‘It’s crazy seeing the actual number of beta testers… It really makes it sink in.’
But he knew, in reality, there were tens of billions of people on the planet. Thousands were nothing. So this number made sense to him.
He clicked through the menus and of course, his friends list was empty. At the top, it displayed a box that said “Input user ID to send a request.’
He didn’t know any other beta testers besides those psychos from earlier, so he just exited that screen. Not to mention, he wasn’t sure how much he could trust other system users right now.
His inbox only displayed one message and it was a generic welcome message.
“Welcome User #23563 Matt to the message system! You can friend and chat with other users, as well as create a party.”
Matt stared at the message a bit annoyed. They really were treating this like a game. It didn’t sit right with him considering he almost died today.
‘I need to find out what all this means eventually.’
While the system was useful, it was mysterious. He often didn’t think about the implications of it, since he just needed to survive and get stronger. He honestly felt like, even if he did know what was going on, he wouldn’t be strong enough to do anything about it, at least how he was currently.
He returned back to the main messaging screen and clicked on the last option, the party screen. After he opened the screen he only saw two large buttons that said, create party and join party.
But both were greyed out. He assumed that they weren’t able to be selected since he didn’t know any other players.
‘Ok, it’s pretty much just a game party system.’
He decided to move on from the message quest since he had already checked everything out. Next, he activated his crafting skill.
A new menu popped up, but it was much different from any menu he had seen so far with the system. It just had two boxes and a + icon in the center. At the top, it displayed “Place two compatible objects to start crafting.” And finally at the bottom, there was a large button that just said “craft.”
‘So, just crafting? But in real life, that seems kinda OP.’
Matt wanted to test it immediately so he headed into his small kitchen. He already had a craft in mind and pulled out a single spoon and a small kitchen timer he had from his kitchen drawer. He wanted to see what it would craft.
‘I think this should work. Maybe?’
He held the timer and spoon and tried to push them into the crafting window. He wasn’t sure how it would work, but the moment the clock and spoon each touched their crafting box, they made a pop sound and were suddenly now displayed as a 2d image in each box. He now no longer had the physical items.
‘That felt weird.’
He was curious, so he reached his hand into one of the squares, hoping to pull the item back out. His hand went through the menu, and he felt the spoon as if he was 3D again. He grabbed onto it and pulled it, causing the spoon to come out with his hand.
‘So, it’s using space like with my storage skill.’
He put the spoon back and felt like that was enough messing around. He wanted to see what would happen if he crafted these items together. So, he finally pressed the big button that said “craft.”
The two items became greyed out and a loading bar appeared above them. There was text that said “Crafting, please wait,” and the loading bar displayed a timer.
[59 Minutes]