After seeing the timer on the crafting window, Matt felt a bit annoyed.
‘An hour for that?’
He didn’t want to wait that long and felt like it was unreasonable, but he also started to consider how the skill was only level 1. In addition to that, combining objects like that just wasn’t possible.
‘I guess it’s fine.’
He also noticed how it didn’t tell him what it would make, but at least it seemed like it worked. He decided to just move on to other things while the object was crafted.
Matt wanted to finally bring out [Help] again now that he was in a safe place. He had promised to give her full access to his phone, which he was a little concerned about, but he had already given his word.
He also knew she wouldn’t be of any help if he didn’t let her use it. Not to mention, while he did end up encountering the beta testers anyway, she at least tried to help him. Not to mention, her plan wasn’t bad, he felt like he could’ve done it more effectively.
‘I should’ve just laid low and found a grocery store to hang out in or something.’
He realized that his biggest mistake today was that he decided to brave it and head home. If he had stayed in a building or public space, then maybe he would’ve never gotten into the bad situation he did.
But that was in the past, right now he felt like it was time to hold up his end of the deal, so he activated the [Help] skill. The small blue digital fairy appeared once more. She instantly started asking the real questions.
“Are you done now? Give me your phone!”
Matt sighed.
“Yeah, I’m done. Here.”
She took it and started using it immediately. Her small digital fingers typing at superhuman speeds. But as he was watching her search the web, something strange happened that he didn’t expect.
[Help] was starting to glow brighter and brighter until suddenly, she started to enter the system again, as if he had deactivated the skill. She made a sound as she disappeared.
“A….”
Matt was concerned at first but then saw a new notification.
__________
[Help] has leveled up!
[Lv.1] -> [Lv.2]
__________
He saw the message and realized he had forgotten that she could even level up. She was technically a skill, not just a component of the system. He wasn’t exactly sure what this meant, but he quickly got his answer.
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He heard her voice coming from the system, even though he hadn’t activated the skill.
“HELLOO!”
“HEELLOOO!”
He realized that his life may be noisier from this point on.
“Yeah, who is it?”
“It’s me, stupid!”
He noticed how when she was talking, a small fairy icon with an image of a speaker was being highlighted in the corner of his vision.
“So, are you just in the system now?” he asked.
“I think so, can see everything.”
He wondered if this applied to his system when he used it, so he opened up his stats. And it seemed like she could interact with the system slightly. It was like she was a personal assistant.
‘This is actually pretty useful, as long as she doesn’t yell in my ear all the time.’
“LET ME OUT, INTERNET!”
He sighed and he activated the skill to see if she could still come out. He was wondering if anything had changed, but, she did come out as usual and looked fairly the same.
The moment she was out again, she beelined it for his phone and started using it again.
‘I guess some things never change.’
He decided to just leave her alone. He also considered that it was useful for her to know about the world to better help him with his system, so he felt like giving her access to the internet was a net positive. He also had stuff he wanted to do, and he didn’t need his phone to do them.
Even though it was after midnight, Matt was itching to get stronger, especially after tonight. He really didn’t need much sleep anymore, at least he didn’t need 8 hours. His high constitution seemed to decrease how much he needed to sleep. At this point, he could probably be fully satisfied with only 5 or 6 hours.
Because of this, he wanted to at least accomplish something more tonight. The three things that came to mind were completing quests, training skills, or training his stats.
He browsed his quests again and quickly realized that one wasn’t going to happen. He only had two quests and both would take time, so he switched to the idea of leveling his skills or stats.
‘So, mind palace is still done for and I feel like that’s the best way for me to train my skills.’
He felt like it would just be wasted time to train his skills out in the open where time moves at a normal speed. He couldn’t really train his stats in the mind palace since it wasn’t a physical space, so he felt like it would be better to leave skill leveling until his mind palace was up and running again.
‘That just leaves stats then.’
He looked over his stats and tried to decide which one would be the most important, at least for short-term fighting ability. That was the main thing he was trying to prioritize right now. If he died, that was it.
When he looked at the stats that were close to evolving, it was really only his CON. All of the other stats were below halfway. His constitution was at 19, so he felt like it wouldn’t be too hard to bump it to 20.
‘If I want to survive, I feel like constitution is just the way to go.’
It was also an easy stat to level in his experience. He just needed to get damaged. Though, the only issue with that was, he wasn’t sure how to heal quickly besides leveling up. He always gained 1 health point back every so often due to his passive regeneration, but it usually took too long to train his CON for long periods of time.
He decided he would try to get his constitution to at least 20 tonight. If he could boost it further, he would try. Before he left, he checked his crafting window and saw that there was still a while left.
‘I might as well burn some time and then check this out once it’s finished.’
With his mind made up, he opened the door to his apartment, planning to set off into the night to train his CON somewhere.
But as he stepped out the door and breathed in the cold night air, a metal bat swung toward his head.