I sleep. Deeply, and for a long time. I wake up at some point when it’s dark and quiet, my stomach rumbling. Fortunately, the Inventory seems to have a little of its own light – it’s odd because it doesn’t light up the area around me, but I can see the items held inside it fine – so I take out my canteen and a couple of handfuls of meat, giving myself a midnight supper. Or whatever the time is. My hunger and thirst satisfied, I drop back into sleep, not waking until the next morning.

I’m finally roused by the sound of birds and the light filtering into my cave from the mouth and the hole Kalanthia bored for me. Awake, I don’t exactly leap into action, lying still while blinking at the ceiling as my conscious mind catches up with what’s been happening. So. Massive leopard-like creatures called nundas which can both talk and do magic. Nope, nothing abnormal about that – why would you think it? It fits right in with reptilian-mammal or reptilian-avian crossbreeds and Classes with Skills and magic healing spells…

Magic healing spells! I sit bolt upright, my hands clutching at my face. My eyes! I can see! With both of them. I wink one then the other, my vision becoming limited each time, but no longer am I left in darkness with my right eye shut. I slump back down on my bed, small chuckles that devolve into relief-filled hysterical almost-sobs. I’m so grateful that it worked, that all the pain wasn’t for nothing. But at the same time, why did it have to be necessary in the first place?! What kind of place is it where becoming half-blinded is just an everyday possibility?

I shake myself. I might be safer than I was yesterday, but I need to remember that I’m still in a world which will kill me more easily than I can say ‘jack robinson’ if I let my guard down even the slightest. Falling apart is going to help exactly no one.

So. What should I do? Kalanthia said she doesn’t need a babysitter for another few days, so I’ve got a bit of time. I can either work on making this shelter more of a comfortable place – including making the tools necessary for the task; I can work on improving my weapon situation, giving myself more range – also requiring making tools first; or I can go hunting and collect more Energy and corpses which will give me resources necessary for the other two tasks. Or I could do nothing and take the day off, giving me a chance to detox from all the stress chemicals which have no doubt been filling my body over the last few days.

Wanting to have all possible information to hand, I check my status screen and my eyebrow shoots up as I see my current Energy store of sixteen percent. I earned nine percent overnight? Apparently. Which means I slept for...I do the calculations quickly...about fourteen hours?! Seriously? I was that tired? Sheesh. Then again, I suppose I haven’t really slept properly since I’ve been here, and I’ve been running around getting half-killed and not eating properly either. I have to say I feel a lot better now, though.

Maybe that’s a supporting argument for just staying in and relaxing for a day? Read a book, enjoy the sun? I’ve got enough food for several days, and water’s not hard to access. And if I’m accumulating Energy even while doing nothing, I’m even arguably making progress. It would probably do my mental state some good, and allow me some time to make proper plans…

OK, I’ve managed to convince myself. So, that’s what I do all day: nothing. Or rather, a day of ‘self-care’. I pull a couple of my favourite feel-good novels out, find a good position in the sun, and relax. Nothing tries to kill me; nothing tries to eat me. Not if you don’t include the baby nunda which seems to see me as a new toy she’d like to play with. And by ‘play with’, I mean ‘chew and pounce on’. Fortunately, her mother distracts her with something else after not too long allowing me to go back to my reading and chilling.

It’s not a complete waste of a day: by the time I go to bed, I’m relaxed in a way I haven’t been since the last time I went on holiday. When nothing is trying to eat me, this world is peaceful in a way Earth really isn’t. Or at least, in a way my life in a capital city wasn’t. The only sounds are those of nature, the sun is warm and benevolent, and the food is organic, albeit boring. Plus, I’ve gained another eleven percent Energy bringing my total up to twenty-seven percent, and I have a plan for the immediate future.

In the end, I’ve decided to do a bit of hunting. Enough, at least, to push me to the next level. It shouldn’t take too long – if I gained forty-five percent just from the killer-chickens, and then an additional eight percent by eating their hearts straight away, it shouldn’t take me too long to get to the next level if I don’t accept any more status points. Plus, although I’m still not too sure of the day length – though I’m increasingly sure that it’s slightly longer than that of Earth’s – if I go by a day length of twenty-four hours, I should gain approximately fifteen percent just from absorption. In short, although I don’t really want to face opponents like the killer-chickens again, hunting is still likely to be much more profitable Energy-wise than anything else, but whatever I do, my Energy store will still be increasing.

Once I’ve levelled up, I’ll take a bit more time to get to level two, and if any status points are offered, I’ll accept them. I’ve spent quite a bit of time today considering different approaches, and this seems like the best one. My reasoning is based on the time I’ve spent absorbing and combing through the knowledge of the System stone.

I’ve had the time to learn some interesting facts, and use them to draw conclusions about Earth. Apparently, ten is an important number on Nicholas’ world because it’s the average starting status value for an adult. On a side note, it’s unknown what the actual starting status values are as the only way of truly seeing one’s status is to absorb a Class and that can only be done after puberty has finished, for some reason. Which, since girls tend to finish puberty before boys, means they get a bit of a head-start. But anyway. Starting status values.

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These can also vary depending on what the person has developed prior to gaining a Class – as I experienced, someone who has worked hard on physical conditioning will have higher starting values in those stats compared to someone who’s skipped leg – and arm, and abs – day to work hard on their mental abilities. In the former case, their Strength might be up to fifteen whereas in the latter, their Strength could be around eight.

Starting with an Intelligence level near, if not above, ten is a reasonable supposition, hence why he seemed to expect the possibility. However, the point is that these are normal values for Nicholas’ world. As much as it rankles, I don’t think my poor starting values are anything to do with me specifically – I wasn’t so obviously deficient among my peers on Earth. No, I think it’s more to do with the almost complete dearth of Energy on Earth; we’re probably almost all weaklings compared to Nicholas’ people.

I’m basing that theory on cobbled-together ‘memories’ from the stone with memories from Earth. Unless Nicholas’ people, despite seeming to be humans to all intents and purposes, are some super-powered alien species, Energy has to play a role. For example, Strength.

One of the fleeting memories I’ve inherited is of a farmer-like figure hog-tying a cow-like creature and heaving it into a cart. By hand. Alone. Now, I’m no expert in cows, but unless it’s some sort of miniature calf – which it wasn’t – it’s got to weigh upwards of eight hundred kilograms, probably even over a ton. This cow looked pretty well-built, so I’m going to peg it as approximately one thousand kilograms.

Now, men in the Olympics lift a good three hundred kilograms; I think someone may have lifted over four hundred. I’m pretty sure that people have lifted way over that one way or another, perhaps as much as a ton. But those are going to be very special people, possibly even unique. This farmer isn’t. He’s probably not even trained for it except for the normal labour on a farm. He also doesn’t have a Class, but he’s being used as an example of a person who has naturally increased their Strength to around fifteen points.

That makes him stronger than average, even by Nicholas’ world’s standards, but he’s not so much stronger that he’s their equivalent of someone in the Olympics. Just as on Earth, at least when farming was more labour intensive, farmers are generally tougher and stronger than people who spend their days in intellectual pursuits, and their physical stats reflect that.

At fifteen points, this farmer would be considered to be in the seventy-fifth percentile. I know this because, first of all, the stone told me, but second of all, because the other world’s equivalent of scientists have run many, many tests. Although it’s not possible to actively read the stats of someone with no Class, good old Earth-style testing still works. By comparing people with a Class with people without a Class in different tasks, the scientists have managed to determine that the absolute maximum a person on Nicholas’ world can reach without having a Class and thereby levelling up is twenty points in each individual stat. After that, Energy is necessary – no amount of hard work will raise the stat above that threshold.

Which comes onto my theory – that in fact Energy helps the inhabitants to increase their range of naturally possible stats, even when no Classes are involved. I mean, when it comes to Strength, before I arrived, I could bench-press about seventy kilograms on a good day – my record was a hundred and seventeen. There’s a big difference between that and a ton!

My Strength was five when I arrived, and, given that I was lifting on the upper side of expectations for my age, I’ve got to guess that the average Strength of an adult human is around that, possibly even a four. Given that I doubt even Earth’s top weight-lifters would be able to lift that cow with the ease the farmer showed – he wasn’t even straining all that much, for heaven’s sake! - I guess that my version of humanity tops out a bit lower than that. Probably around twelve or thirteen points.

There’s a big difference between that and twenty, and the biggest difference I can see between the two worlds is the availability, or not, of Energy.

Anyway, this may only be for Strength; I don’t know if the other stats have a similar difference because the stone didn’t have memories about them. I guess Strength is the most easily observable stat and whoever created the stone thought an example would be educational. It was, especially because I’m now certain that Energy is an essential part which I’ve been missing all my life.

Another piece of evidence about this is how the ‘cost’ of ‘short-cutting’ a stat point increases at certain thresholds. Of course, the stone isn’t clear about the exact cost as we’re dealing with percentages here, and as previously established, what ten percent means to a person with a Common Class is a very different story to someone with an Epic or higher Class. However, the stone was very clear on the fact that after reaching ten in a stat, using Energy to ‘shortcut’ the process of increasing without levelling becomes more expensive. By the time it reaches fifteen, that cost increases again.

Realising that made me understand why the System stone was so adamant that levelling is more efficient for stat gain than earning points, though that only seems to be after a certain point. I don’t yet know how many points I will earn on levelling up, but at this point, I use about fifteen percent to ‘short-cut’ a stat point. So, I would need to gain more than seven stats on level up to make it more effective than simply working on the stat and accepting the point when it’s offered to me. After reaching ten points in a stat, I will only need to gain more than four points to make levelling up more effective than working out. Get above fifteen, and that number of points drops to three.

Taking all that into account, it seems logical to increase my stats naturally – well, naturally plus a boost of Energy – until they’ve reached ten points in each category, rather than trying to level up. Unless I have a Class which gives me eight or more points on level-up, but given how rare those Classes seem to be, I’m not going to bank on that. Except there’s one other bit of information I ran across today which throws a spanner into the works of that resolution. Skills.